A Thomas Bess review of:

Directed By: James McTeigue

Starring: Rain, Naomie Harris, Ben Miles, Sho Kosugi, an absurd number of Ninja extras

Run Time: 99 minutes laden with dead ninjas and special forces operatives.

My friends, it has been a rough couple of weeks at the theater. Between Roland Emmerich’s latest orgy of monument destruction and a certain second installment of the sparkliest vampire series on record, there really hasn’t been much reason for yours truly to fork over money at the box office. For those of you wondering why I didn’t take one for the team in regards to New Moon, after being labeled a Paramount shill a few reviews back (still waiting for my check guys), I figured saying anything bad about the romance between ol’ caveman brow and the world’s only cranky stoner might result in a mysterious “accident” wherein I am crushed under tons and tons of glitter. Death threats and conspiracy theories aside, one movie managed to get me out of the house on Black Friday. A movie so astoundingly bloody I could hardly credit my senses. That film is Ninja Assassin.

Right here’s the part of the review where I’d tell you about the plot. Alas, this is impossible. See, this flick is too busy slaughtering everything that moves to actually be about anything. It’s more like a loosely connected series of set-pieces involving the same characters and hundreds of thousands of ninjas. That said, in an attempt to keep whatever reviewer cred I’ve accrued (no one will tell me how much) here’s my best shot. This forensic researcher by the name of Mika (Harris) has stumbled upon what is apparently supposed to be a startling discovery. Ninjas not only exist, they assassinate people too. (In other news, the sun will set in the west tonight. Film at eleven.) She takes this information to her boss (Miles) with vague plans of bringing the
“Nine Clans” to justice (no word if one of them was the Foot Clan, which would have been awesome) only to find herself the target of the aforementioned ninjas who are willing to use various pointy and sharp things to kill her. Just when all seems lost, a rogue ninja by the name of Raizo (Rain) springs out of the shadows and dispatches Mika’s would be assassins in the most vicious way possible. After that…I don’t know, there’s something about Raizo trying to get revenge on his old clan for some betrayal but trust me when I say you’ll be too busy watching people die to actually care about little things like how and why.

So what’s good? Only one thing really, but in a flick like this it’s the only thing that matters — CARNAGE! Hmmmh, I don’t think that adequately conveys the proper level of violence, lemme try again —
CARNAGE!
That barely scratches the surface, but it’ll have to do. Ninja Assassin manages the rather amazing honor of killing more people in its ninety-nine minute run time then there actually are frames of film. In fact, even in those scenes where you’d swear no one is dying, I bet if you look hard enough you’ll see someone taking their last breath. In all seriousness, I’d wager this movie has a higher body count than the combined runs of Friday the 13th, Halloween and Romero’s …of the Dead films. And it’s not just sword play here folks, not at all. There’s also a veritable hurricane of throwing stars and something that’s basically a dagger at the end of a long length of chain. Oh and the special forces guys that show up in the last act have guns and other modern weapons of course, but those hardly count. The breadth and scope of the violence is absolutely astounding — any adjective that you can think of that describes some sort of harm that could befall human anatomy could be used to describe a single scene. Point is, if you’re out to see the screen painted red, Raizo’s got you covered.

What’s not so good? As I’d mentioned earlier, the plot is bad enough to make The Legend of Chun Li look like a classical epic, but I’d sorta guessed that going in and it seems wrong to hold it against the movie. No, the only thing that really bothered me about Ninja Assassin was the rather odd choice to go with CGI blood instead of the more traditional practical effects. There are plenty of things CGI is good at, blood is not one of them. In fact, it gets so distracting at points that it begins to seem like you’re watching a live action version of Mortal Kombat but for whatever reason they decided to keep the crappy digital blood. And while I normally abhor folks busting out their own MST3K schtick in the theaters, I don’t think anyone would blame you if you adopted a deep, threatening bass and announced “Fatality!” a few times during the course of the story. One other thing, given how trigger happy the MPAA is with cuts these days, I’m amazed at just how much violence was done to and by children in this movie. Parents, I’m telling you right now to keep your kids away from this flick but if you do bring them for whatever reason, please take a few minutes out of your schedule to let them know that it is NOT ok to pummel their classmates into a bloody pulp, ground-and-pound style. It’ll save you on parent teacher conferences and therapy bills down the line.

Should you see it? Well, if you’re looking for anything other than highly stylized violence and some amazing fight choreography, don’t bother. If you’re in a bad mood and in need of the cinematic equivalent of a stress ball, or you just dig ninja on ninja action, get thee to a multiplex and prepare to enjoy.

Til next time, always remember that the calls are coming from inside the house.

Tom Bess has sideburns that are so big they might be considered a beard shaving accident from afar. He blames his current mental state on Stephen King, Mike Nelson, Seth McFarlane and Vince McMahon but bears them no ill will. He passes his time writing movie reviews, but will flee the interwebs forever as soon as Allison Mack starts returning his calls.