James McTeigue, Warner Brothers (22/01/10)

Ninja Assassin is a film targeted at a specific market - namely that of young male movie-goers - and has hopes of raking in the cash rather than collecting critical plaudits. There is nothing wrong with this type of pure popcorn entertainment when it is done well. Sadly, Ninja Assassin turns out to be a pretty lacklustre entry in the action genre; a botched attempt to combine old school martial arts epics with modern cinema pyrotechnics.

This is a violent culture clash adventure where the ancient and shadowy world of the ninja clans takes on the crime–fighting forces of Europol. This results in a massive body count and not just blood on the streets but the walls and ceilings too. At the centre of the chaos is ‘Rain’, a major music star in the Far East, who plays Raizo, the deadly title character. We first encounter Raizo as he makes mincemeat of a Yakuza gang shortly after their leader has laughed uproariously at the very notion of the existence of Ninjas. By the time Raizo has finished with him, the thug is laughing on the other side of his face which, incidentally, has been sliced off and is lying on the floor in a pool of gore.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, nosey Europol agent Mika Corretti (Naomie Harris) has discovered a link between a series of high profile assassinations and a money trail leading back to Japan. A quick peek under ‘N’ in the agencies’ secret files throws up a legendry Ninja clan called the Ozunu. Mika’s boss (Ben Miles) does not believe a word of her story and frankly who can blame him.

The Europol scenes are cut together, unconvincingly, with flashbacks to Raizo’s childhood where, as an orphan, he was abducted off the streets by the ruthless Lord Ozunu (Sho Kusugi) and taken to a school to be moulded into a heartless killer. ‘School’ is a far from accurate description as the place is more like a prison camp where failure is met with beatings and any attempt to escape is punishable by death. The latter fate befalls Raizo’s young love and when the heart-broken warrior later refuses to carry out a killing for Lord Ozunu he finds himself running for his own life.

These two disparate story strands meet when Mika gets too close to the truth and Ozunu sends his hit men to rub her out. Raizo, who has been keeping a close but clandestine eye on the agent, steps in with a few well-aimed sword swipes and saves her life. In return, Mika agrees to help her new friend seek revenge and the whole thing culminates with gun toting Special Forces troops taking on the combined blades and agility of the Ninja hordes.

The talent involved in Ninja Assassin is impressive. The producers are the Wachowski brothers who were responsible for The Matrix and its self-indulgent sequels. Joel Silver is also involved, having previously produced the likes of the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon series. Ninja Assassin is an attempt to update the martial arts films of its makers’ youth for a modern audience. They have even drafted in Sho Kusugi the revered star of many such a movie to give their endeavour some kudos. All this and yet the film still does not work.

The fight scenes look good but are strangely uninvolving. Having bad guys who dress in black and hang out in the darkness, whispering to each other like Tolkien’s ring wraiths, makes it difficult to work out what is going on a lot of the time. This is exacerbated by the fact that the action moves so quickly that if you blink you might well miss it. For some time there has been a close relationship between cinema and computer games, with each influencing the other in turn. Ninja Assassin looks so much like a video game in the way that the combatants move and the sprays of blood gush from open wounds, that I am surprised that the screen did not feature an energy bar and a score count. That said, there is a well-choreographed chase through traffic in downtown Berlin with Ninjas leaping over cars which shows just how good the rest of the film might have been.

The cast do their best given the circumstances. After her turn in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Naomie Harris is well acquainted with big scale productions but here she just looks lost and is given precious little to do. The Wachowskis obviously plan to make Rain into a film star after giving him an earlier role in Speed Racer. He certainly has a presence and, in a rare few moments, is allowed to show a degree of charm in his scenes with Harris. I also like the fact that in his music career Rain’s album and tour names exhibit no indication of personal modesty, ranging from the simple Rain to the more ambitious It’s Raining and the slightly suggestive Rain’s Coming.

Rain may well make it as an action man as he is very good at running around without a shirt on, fighting and throwing shuriken (that’s those deadly little metal stars to the uninitiated.) He is also, in modern vernacular, ‘well fit’ but by the time the battle is won he is so dirty, bloodied and bruised that he resembles an underdone, poorly assembled hamburger.

Ninja Assassin is loud and brash but has very little substance. However, there is no doubt a market for it. If it had been released when I was a teenager, a time when lines such as “I want the international task force mobilised in five minutes” would have been laudable rather than laughable, then I would have probably seen it twice and later on bought an ex-rental VHS copy from Blockbusters (other video rental outlets are available.) Tragically for all concerned, I am now forty.

review: Alan Diment

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