Well I didn't exactly hate it, there's nothing to hate about these cheaper-by-the-dozen action flicks. I've sure seen lots of other ninja flicks that were a lot worse, but somehow I ended up being really disappointed despite the lack of any expectations. Maybe because this could have been ... good?
The problem with some people is simply the mindset that it is okay for an action movie to be dumb, corny, terribly acted, redundant and unoriginal. "It's just an action flick" "It's just a ninja flick" what's up with that? Why wouldn't I want my money's worth when watching a movie, no matter what genre it is?
I wanted to like ninja assassin so bad and I welcome some cheese in my martial arts movies but clearly there hasn't been any thought put into the making of this stinker. The dialogues were laughable (I rarely facepalm during a movie but there's a red mark on my forehead now shaped like my hand) even given the genre conventions, the investigation plot was entirely pointless, the visual effects were lousy, the gallons of cgi blood made the fight scenes lack any sort of impact. The dramatic structure of the film was all over the place, the entire first half was constantly interrupted by flashbacks in a way that I would expect from Godfrey Ho and not a hollywood director (no matter how no-name). Yeah, I think Godfrey Ho is a good comparison, at times it seemed like two entirely different films cut together to what vaguely resembles a story.
The flashback scenes were generally good and personally I could have enjoyed a classic generic revenge movie built from that. I liked the training scenes, why not construct a movie from there? Establish the characters, let us grow fond of them, instead of just tossing in a love interest that we couldn't care less about, build up the uprising against the master and the following years of trying to get by without the clan, how he slowly built his activities against his former master and finally the confrontation at the end, which is kind of what they tried to do but without any build up of tension because it was just shoved in as flashbacks and then retold literally by that investigator (what's her name?) in case we were too stupid to remember what had happened one minute prior. It would have been fairly standard revenge fair but at least it would have worked, instead we got the cinematic equivalent of someone dangling a shiny object in front a cat, look at the flips these guys are doing!! Look at me, I'm cool!
The martial arts scenes were mostly good, though not really original in any way - ooh, a grand finale in a burning traditional japanese house/castle. Haven't seen that one before...
I could go more in depth, what was totally aggravating was the lack of any kind of coherence. Just crap out a ninja flick with the usual lore you could gather from bad 80's cinema and videogames (unfortunately not included: Tenchu) with some "state of the art" "stylish" visuals, lots of "blood" (because that'll sell to the teenage crowd)and don't take a single risk whatsoever, shy away from anything original, it's your enemy!
Too bad, this could have been a good movie, what a waste of good martial artists. You know...thinking about it, this film was dead on arrival, if it has "ninja" in the title it's pretty much guaranteed to blow. There's no recovering from that.
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