Look, I think we’re all going to be on the same page when I offer the opinion that ninjas are fuckin’ cool. Yes, I know I sound like a twelve year old playing on an arcade machine in the early nineties, but they just are, OK? In fact, there was a clutch of movies that hit us in waves throughout the eighties that went out of their way to clumsily prove it thanks to overzealous movie studio Cannon that used the American Ninja series and other titles to angrily insist it. However, deranged action movies that loudly maintain that the black-suited assassin was borderline supernatural in their abilities were noticeably thin on the ground in the decades since and I guess both Joel Silver and the Wachowski Siblings had had enough of all the non-ninja related titles we were getting.
Thus in 2009, we got Ninja Assassin, a blood spraying slash-a-thon that saw director James McTeigue swap out the twirling, CGI daggers of V For Vendetta for spinning CGI throwing stars in an orgy of style over content that sees the digital blood flow like water during flood season.
Europol agent Mika Coretti has become convinced that there’s been a string of high profile, political murders that’s been committed by a cult of Ninja who specialise in assassination (makes sense considering the title), but no matter who she goes to, she’s laughed out of every conversation. However, after finally convincing her superior that she money-linked murders are indeed being performed by black-masked marauders, she soon finds herself in a whole world of hurt when she runs into rogue Ninja, Raizo, who leads her down the katana wielding rabbit hole.
You see, Raizo was once a member of the Ozunu Clan, who have a rather disconcerting habit of snatching up orphans and training them from a young age to be virtually invulnerable killers. During his brutal training, we was trained to ignore pain thanks to having the soles of his feet caned and soon his entire body was scared up to be a road map dedicated to shutting out any negative sensations that could dull his budding abilities. However, one feeling he couldn’t shut out was his growing love for fellow abused student, Kiriko, but as they grow older under the cruel tutelage of the ruthless Lord Ozunu, the object of Raizo’s affections becomes disillusioned with her master’s teachings and hope to flee – which never turns out well in these sorts of films.
Years later, Raizo is dedicated to foiling any attempt by the Ozunu Clan in revenge for their many grievances against him and soon both he and Mika find each other as they look to bring down the murderous organisation. But even with the near-unkillable Raizo and an army of armed Europol special forces guys set up to oppose them, will they be enough to halt an entire clan of Ninja equipped with various pointy, stabby things.
Too late to captialise on the wave of American Neo-Kung Fu movies that followed in the wake of The Matix and too early to feed off the slick pulp of John Wick, Ninja Assassin, found itself virtually invisible to audiences when it came out. In fact, when I first saw it, I also dismissed it as a dumb, American, martial arts film that gave way more attention to flashing weapons and arcing gore than it did to anything approaching actual, adult characterisation. However, while this movie still proves to be unconscionably stupid on a rewatch, I responded much more to it’s comic book, anime excesses to discover that it’s actually a fun, if disposable, love letter to idiotic Ninja movies of days gone by. You rock up expecting a nuanced piece about practitioners of the mysterious arts, you’re bound to be disappointed, but see it as a hyperviolent ode to glorious trash such as Revenge Of The Ninja, and you just might have a good time.
For a start, McTeigue obviously cares predominantly about craming as much splattery dismemberment onto the screen as humanly possible, with every other aspect blatantly coming a distant second. When he isn’t delivering po-faced, Zack Snyder-esque sequences that detail Raizo’s vicious training, he’s marshaling expansive, exaggerated action sequences that sees numerous background characters meets genuinely splatactular ends. Yes, these sequences are tremendously overblown and yes, they frantically overuse that natural enemy of the fevered gorehound – CGI blood – but if you compare it to the kind of bloodletting usually found in most agessive examples of Anime (think Ninja Scroll) and you accept that the film vehemently maintains that the mass of a human body is ninety percent artery, then it’s easier to cone to terms with the sight of people bleeding vast gouts of cartoon blood.
As a result, the actors are reduced to mere side attractions. While Rain’s abilities as Raizo are impressive as he lunges across the screen, dodging rapid-fire shuriken and lashing his enemies with chained blades, he’s utilised more as a human special effect who slices and gets sliced on return. Elsewhere, Naomie Harris’ Europol agent has a lost look in her eye that suggests that she was left to wing her performance as everyone else fussed about the admittedly impressive choreography and look for the film. But aside from the generic non-starter that is Rick Yune’s henchman and Sho Kosugi’s typically gruff final boss, the people in this film really are mostly just living mannequins waiting for their cue to bleed profusely.
With that being said, McTeigue certainly shoots the shit out of things and while he’s occasionally guilty of over shooting some of the action to the point that picking out some of that intricate choreography from the muzzle flashes and erratic camera angles. However, to give the film it’s flowers, it does manage to give the illusion that these fighters do have the ability to blend into the shadows. One sequence has Harris try to catch dueling Ninjas in the beam of a shaking torch as they brawl in and out sight, while other scenes see the air literally full of throwing stars as they pepper their victims with razor death. You’ll be shit out of luck if you’re hoping for anything approaching subtlety or realism and the second the film starts dropping in X-Men levels of superpowers, intrest starts to wane – isn’t the ability to dissappear into the shadows enough? Do we have to claim that Ninja can heal like Wolverine and teleport like Nightcrawler on top of everything else?
As flawed an action movie you can get, Ninja Assassin nevertheless wins you over if you’re in the mood for a cartoonish, ultra-violent Ninja romp that’s far more interested about carving up stuntmen, it hits the spot with the bluntness of a bisected torso. It may be as mature as a twelve year-old playing Shinobi on a coin-op machine, but if you like your Ninja extremely fucking active, this assassin admittedly kills it.
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