A look at Ninja Assassin: the title is not redundant.

‘Ninja Assassin’ isn’t trying to change the world.  It’s an over the top bloody ninja movie, capturing the sometimes cheesy feel of 80’s ninja movies, notably the Ninja series starring Sho Kosugi.  To that effect, it works very well.  The film takes every supernatural element applied to ninjas, and treats them as real, to the point where they actually disappear in shadows, and can heal themselves with the power of their own will, to sometimes spectacular effect.

Before I go on with the review, I just want to clear something up.  More than one person has pointed out that the title is redundant, ninjas being assassins and all.  Well, in a recent interview, co-writer J. Michael Straczynski explains the obvious reason why it isn’t…

A number of folks have mentioned that the title is redundant, since often Ninjas are assassins, but that’s not the point of the film. It’s about an assassin that goes after Ninjas… [from CBR]

Other than that quote above, which shouldn’t be a spoiler to anyone, the following has no major story spoilers.  However, for those who wouldn’t even click on the trailer above out fear of learning anything about the plot, you certainly shouldn’t…The basic story follows Raizo (played by South Korean star Rain), a ninja who’s turned his back on the clan, as well as a Europol forensics investigator (Naomi Harris, Selena from ’28 Days Later’) out to prove that modern day ninja clans still exist, and has finally found the piece of the puzzle that convinces her boss (Ben Miles, Patrick from the great British sitcom ‘Coupling’).   Though the story isn’t groundbreaking, writers Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski (who was called in to fix the script), do a good job of playing with conventions.  By using flashbacks for a large portion of the film, the audience is given a visceral way to learn the emotional journey of Raizo, and why he turned his back on the clan headed by Ozunu (Sho Kosugi, king of 80’s ninja movies, in a great turn as a villian) as well as expose the audience to the history of ninjas in the film’s world.  This keeps the amount of expository dialogue to a bare minimum, leaving more screen time for the real star of the film.

The movie is all about the fight sequences, and although it’s laden with wire work, and an abundance of CGI weapons and blood, the action remains mostly coherent.  I’ve never been a fan of action films that couldn’t establish a sense of ‘place’ for the action, with Michael Bay being the biggest offender.  In that respect, director James McTeigue (‘V For Vendetta) does a great job riding the line between rapid editing and maintaining a sense of visual and spatial flow.  It’s not the ‘action ballet’ of John Woo’s earlier works, but the style is at least somewhat informed by it.

How they opted to portray the ninja ability to hide in shadows is fantastic in this film.  The combination of quality martial arts action with some basic compositing tricks makes for a few stand out fight scenes, with the combatants literally disappearing in shadows.

It’s also a VERY gory film.  This movie pulls no punches, and treats flesh as thin skinned bags of blood, with every slice or piercing being rewarded with about 2 pints of CGI blood exploding on the screen.  Though over the top, the blood actually works for the most part, with it’s design reminding me of some of the swordplay from the Frank Miller comic ‘Ronin’.  Much like ‘300’, it’s more about style than gore.  At the same time, in emotionally transformative scenes, such as a Raizo flashback to a fight in a bathroom, the violence loses much of the cartoonish veneer, and becomes much more visceral.  It’s clear that a lot of thought was put into how both the action and resultant blood would be portrayed based on the emotional weight of the individual scenes.   In fact, a couple of scenes were almost a blend of John Woo’s earlier films, especially ‘Hardboiled’ and Sam Peckinpah’s work, with the emotion being delivered through the violence.

Like I said off the top, it’s not going to change the world.  It’s a ninja revenge story.  The good news is if that’s what you want, and you want it delivered with some style and flair, then ‘Ninja Assassin’ is well worth the price of admission.