Ninja Assassin Movie Review:Cutting All the Fun out of Martial Arts
I’m not going to over-simplify and proclaim that making a good ninja movie is the easiest thing in the world. But I never would have guessed that doing so is as difficult as James McTeigue’s Ninja Assassin makes it appear. This is a big-budget movie with a top-flight crew and a star blessed with undeniable magnetism, not to mention the R-rated freedom to provide the copious blood and gore that so many genre fans crave. Yet it plays no better than a cheap direct to DVD feature. Ninja Assassin is a forgettable throwaway, a waste of creative talent and the audience’s time.
Like a relic from old Hollywood, only with a lot more blood, the film exists as a would-be star-making vehicle for the Korean actor/pop star Rain, who impressed the Wachowskis and producer Joel Silver while working on Speed Racer. The biggest surprise of this film is that, with respect to their estimation of Rain’s potential, Silver and the Wachowskis weren’t out in left field. Rain has the raw physical prowess to make a career as an action star, and while there’s nothing in Ninja Assassin to say he can actually act, his strong silent persona here should be enough to carry a film or two.
Then again, it doesn’t carry Ninja Assassin. But I’m not sure anything could.
Legend has it that this shooting script is the result of J. Michael Straczynski rewriting a previous script draft in 53 hours. That feels generous; I would have guessed he penned the movie over lunch. What we’ve got is the origin story of a ninja, played by Rain, and the intertwining tale of two Europol agents who attempt to investigate and bring down a modern clan of shadowy killers in black pajamas. The story is merely an excuse for bloodshed, a fact underlined every time the agents Mika (Naomie Harris) and her superior, Ryan (Ben Miles) pause to cough up inane dialogue.
The overly grim bare-bones story doesn’t kick in until after a bait and switch opening promises more gratuitously gore-soaked action than the movie is able to deliver. A ninja attacks a room full of Yakuza wankers; the first swordstroke cuts a man’s head in half. The slice is an adrenaline jolt; that execution of an unflinching dismemberment plan is all we’re really here to see.
