Ninja Assassin
In contrast to this week’s Asian epic, Red Cliff, Ninja Assassin is pure shlock—hysterically entertaining. Directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), the action flick opens with a Yakuza gangster getting tattooed by an old man (Randall Duk Kim). Angered by the tattoo master, the gangster brandishes a golden handgun and threatens violence. The old man spots a sealed envelope containing black dust. This, he warns, is the mark of a ninja assassin so powerful he may as well be a demon. Inside of a minute, the gangster and all his cronies are thrashed, slashed and hacked to pieces.
While splattering and spraying a shade of red that humans just do not bleed, the stealthy ninja isn’t a demon. He is Raizo, played by Asian pop superstar Rain; there’s an inside joke when one Europol agent quips he looks like he’s in a boy band. Raizo was orphaned at youth and picked up by Ninjutsu master Ozunu (martial arts flick veteran Shô Kosugi). He and other students were beaten, kicked, berated and traumatized into becoming merecenary assassins to aid in Ozunu’s commercial gain.
He’s as devoted a disciple of the way of the ninja as ever there has been. However, his breaking point is reached when a fellow ninja abductee he likes, Kiriko (Anna Sawai) is maimed by Ozunu for disobedience. The only positive force in Raizo’s life, she escapes the training camp, and he is left with nothing but his rage. It’s a shallow parable of unrequited love, protective instincts, and so on, but the film doesn’t drown you in it or take itself too seriously—whole pints of fake blood sloshing this way and that.
The tension mechanism involves two investigators for Europol, Maslow (Ben Miles) and Mika (Naomie Harris). Mika uncovers connections between several clans, including the Ozunu clan, convincing Maslow to let her pursue it further despite his initial objections. This is, of course, just the semblance of a plot thrown together from many cop dramas as the fluff between action sequences of violence porn.
But it’s reliable violence porn. Hand-to-hand combat is delivered by the busload—literally. At one point, Ozunu’s students come after Raizo one after another, like expendable video game characters. I wondered what bus they drove in to get there. Minutes later, Raizo escapes out a window and lands on… a VW bus!
There’s no particular mystery or intrigue going on here. The only astonishing thing is, with the degree of injuries that Raizo sustains, there’s no threshold for a viewer to ascertain at what point he is actually in mortal danger. At any time that Raizo looks he might be imperiled, ninja magic can be invoked and—poof—he’s healed. One minute he’s chained to a wall, and the next he’s miraculously freed with just fractions of a second to spare before men with guns riddle him with bullets.
Produced by the Wachowskis—Larry and Andy—who rose to fame with The Matrix, an homage to Asian martial arts films and Japanese Anime, Ninja Assassin fetishizes violence to the point where it’s simply absurd to question the logic or physics at work. The only complaint might be that the limits of the actors’ abilities as martial artists are concealed in shadows—tight angles; footage sliced and diced more than Raizo’s victims. It’s nowhere near the calibre of martial artistry displayed in Shô Kosugi’s classics, including Nine Deaths of the Ninja.
As a viewer, your only task here is to watch, eat popcorn, and laugh, jump or shriek—whichever works for you—whenever you see heads roll, limbs fly or or hemoglobin spurting.
Red Cliff opens Wednesday, November 25, at the Angelika Film Center at Mockingbird Station in Dallas.
Ninja Assassin • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 • Running Time: 99 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody stylized violence throughout, and language. • Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures