I Wish I Were a Ninja

When I go to watch movies in a theatre I like to try and take something away from the viewing experience.  It is for this reason that I enjoy movies with real life emotion and characters that the audience can feel connected with.  While Ninja Assassin certainly evokes some type of unidentifiable emotion, it is definitely not the type of emotional connection I look for in other movies (And unless you are a weapons connoisseur and can move swiftly from shadow to shadow I think it would be very difficult to connect with the characters). However, the movie is definitely good for cheap thrills and a never ending supply of ninja moves – literally never ending.

The opening scene sets the tone for the rest of the film with a ninja induced blood bath, wiping out an entire Yakuza gang, that would make Quentin Tarantino have multiple orgasms.  Quick Disclaimer: This movie is no Quentin Tarantino movie apart from the body count.  The scenes lack the cinematic beauty that Tarantino makes sure to emphasize and, instead, are just cold blooded killing with swords attached to chains.  Additionally, don’t head to this movie expecting anything resembling a Bruce Lee flick.  Those classics and the revolutionary concepts behind them cannot be touched.

The very basic concept behind Ninja Assassin is that one young student, Raizo (Played by Korean pop star Rain), decides to rebel from a ninja training compound.  The compound is, as one would expect, an isolated training ground for orphans that uses heavy handed methods to break the young assassins.  Raizo’s good friend, and perhaps potential love interest, because we all know that today no movie is safe from the inevitable love story, Kiriko, decides to run from the “family” because she is able to see the evil nature beneath the veil that the master had created.  She is captured by Raizo’s brother and killed for her treasonous actions.  Ultimately this causes Raizo to realize that the clan is not his family and runs away after killing a few of the ninjas.  Fast forward a few years and Raizo is a killing machine focused on stopping those same ninjas he once learned alongside from killing those with any knowledge of their existence.  Watching Raizo’s training is fairly entertaining, but the fact that this ninja uses a telephone landline was a little troubling (the theatre was pretty crowded surprisingly and many couldn’t help but laugh at a few of the cheesy lines and shallow movie elements).

Europol researcher Mika (Naomie Harris) stumbles upon a former agent’s work outlining the inner details of this same ninja clan, getting her caught up in an extensive plot to make sure no one finds out the real secret behind their existence.  Spoiler Alert: The ninjas are being used as personal mercenaries for anyone willing to pay a large sum of money.  It did take me about half of the movie to realize this since it isn’t explored very thoroughly (The central storyline focuses on Raizo’s survival) and when this idea is (attempted to be) explained it comes out like a whole bunch of mumbling and scattered information.

As I said, Ninja Assassin does instigate some form of emotion – the kind of emotion that one would feel if 300 had a child with Crank and then threw in some martial arts.  However, it all seemed a little superficial to me.  The Raizo character was actually believable, but I was disappointed with the limited martial arts that were replaced by computer generated killing (I guess that is what you get when you rely on a pop star to headline this kind of film genre).  The cliché lines were way too hard to ignore and I just couldn’t help but crave something that included subtitles.