Ninja Assassin: Review By 313td

Ninja Assassin.After reading a title like that, you pretty much know what you are going to get,that's a given.You do not expect a movie called NINJA ASSASSIN to be boring. What you do expect is high amounts of entertaining and stylized action and that is just what we get.James McTeigue takes this title and weaves a tale of forbidden love, family betrayal, and government conspiracy. Complete with some hard-to-see fight scenes and some harder-to-hear dialogue, all delivered with a poker-straight face and capped off with some super-splattery kills.Raizo (Korean pop star Rain), a man trained in the ways of the ninja since his early childhood. Via flashbacks throughout the film, we learn what led to Raizo forsaking his clan and striking out on his own, and why he wishes vengeance against his former clan. A pretty basic story, except Raizo's goal aligns with those of a government agent, Mika (Naomie Harris), who through research has began to connect Raizo's former clan with the assassinations of many people. To its credit, Assassin doesn't skimp on its action sequences, but what's there is a flurry of fury at best, cluttered with the exaggerated motions of swinging swords and throwing star after throwing star, and then cut up to undermine the genuine physical efforts of its lead and countless stuntmen at every turn. Harris plays panicked on cue, and McTeigue vet Ben Miles (Racer, Vendetta) plays her boss/boyfriend with a perfectly adequate sense of skepticism. None, though, can manage to make the plodding plotting seem particularly urgent or critical in the greater scheme of things, and none can justify the handy mysticism that creeps in enough to make literal shadows out of assailants and heal any wound at any time. If you as I enjoy those old ninja movies of the 80's you will love this movie.Lets face it none of those movies ever won an award,but we love them anyway.it had good fighting,gooshots,minimal plot and lots of ninja.If you rent this movie expecting nothing more than a ninja movie you will enjoy this very much,However there are a couple of times where the scenes were too dark.Nothing about this movie is amazing or anything better than those of the 80's,but if you are missing the nostalgia Ninja Assassin is your movie.