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- Blu-ray: Ninja Assassin
- Rating: R
- Starring: Rain, Naomie Harris, Sho Kosugi, Anna Sawai, Rick Yune and Ben Miles
- Written By: Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski
- Directed By: James McTeigue
- Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
- Series:
Ninja Assassin: Blu Ray Review
What Do You Want? It's Got Freaking NINJAS By
Rob Vaux
March 16, 2010
NINJA ASSASSIN Review
© Mania
Critics really dropped the Pain Hammer on Ninja Assassin and it's kind of hard to see why. There's no sense holding a movie with such a title up to any real standards of quality, and even comparing it to other films from the Wachowski brothers feels thoroughly unfair. It's a down and dirty exercise in genre goofiness--silly and slapshot, but possessing a sly sense of humor and enough knowingness to forgive its ridiculous bits. Director James McTeigue deploys copious action scenes with a grand sense of style, co-screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski provides enough decent dialogue to forgive the less-than-brilliant performances, and the whole thing hangs together with a proper beginning, middle, and end. It ain't Doctor Zhivago, but who the hell cares?
Also, it has ninjas. Lots and lots of ninjas. And when your movie is named Ninja Assassin, ninjas are all you really need. One of them is a good ninja--played by Asian singing sensation Rain, who won't be challenging Daniel Day-Lewis for king of the acting hill anytime soon, but has a lot of screen presence and can fling one of those bladed chain numbers around like nobody's business. He stands arrayed against an entire clan of evil ninjas, former brethren whom he betrayed one night (because, you know, they're evil) and who now want him sliced up into ninja sushi. They also have their sights set on a pretty Interpol agent (Naomie Harris) who's pieced together their existence and thus constitutes a threat to the impenetrable veil of shadows which all ninjas value above life itself.
Wind it up and watch it go. McTeigue careens from set piece to set piece, peppering in copious flashbacks explaining how Rain's character got to where he was, and pausing just long enough to insert the proper amount of exposition. The rest of the running time consists of various people getting sliced to ribbons with various exotic weapons, ninjas melding in and out of the shadows, and a shirtless Rain practicing his moves in dingy apartments. The blood comes in CGI bulk, and Ninja Assassin takes great delight in severing people's limbs clean off, particularly in the opening scene when one of Rain's brethren takes down a loutish gang of yakuza.
Thus did the film promise and thus does it deliver, wrapped in a fine sense of B-movie fun and never pausing to let us observe how ludicrous it all is. Ninja Assassin scores further points by honoring those ninja movies which came before it. Sho Kosugi--spearhead of the thriving ninja movement of the 80s--receives a plum role as the evil clanmaster, and McTeigue has great fun playing with the ninjas' seemingly supernatural abilities to boot. The kills remain appreciably over-the-top throughout, spiked by frequent computer effects but including plenty of legitimate stuntwork as well. McTeigue sticks with trendy modern fight concepts such as freerunning, but lends them the right combination of plausibility and eye-popping acrobatics to make it all hum.
And frankly, it's been too long since a proper ninja movie graced our screens. The grindhouse thrills hold no pretense, and McTeigue doesn't waste his time trying to woo the unconverted. You know right away whether a movie named Ninja Assassin is for you, and those who want a little drive-in style enjoyment should find a tasty morsel here. Pauline Kael once said that good art is so rare, you need to enjoy good trash where you can find it. They don't come any trashier--or any more of a guilty pleasure--than this.
The Disc
The Blu-Ray sports a solid transfer and sparkling audio quality, which pays dividends during the film's numerous fight scenes. It also sports a trio of terrific documentaries--one covering the dodgy history of ninjas, one detailing Rain's training regime (including some impressive before-and-after photos), and one covering the film's fight choreography. All three maintain an energetic pace, as well as bringing a lot of insight into the filmmaking process. The disc also contains some deleted scenes, a DVD copy, a digital copy, and a gratuitous preview for the upcoming Clash of the Titans remake which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
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Thank you. A much better (and fairer) review than the DVD version, which was written by someone who very clearly had no business even watching the movie.