5-Word 365 #311 – Ninja Assassin

You can blame America for today’s delay, since I was up all night watching Sir David Dimbleby on Her Majesty’s BBC reporting on the election as the results came in. Far be it for me to get all political up in your asses, but I just wanted to say well done America. Well done. And now on with the show.

Ninja Assassin

What were you expecting? Shakespeare?

An orphan is taken in by the leader of a clan of ninja, living high in the mountains of Japan. All through his childhood he is trained in the art of ninjutsu in order to become a killer for hire, but after the girl he loves is killed for trying to escape the clan, he rebels against them. Meanwhile, Europol agent Mika Coretti is convinced that there is a secret clan of ninja assassins being hired out for high impact jobs all over the world. Little does she know that she is about to become the focus of their ire. Severed heads ensue.

Really, you don’t come to a movie called Ninja Assassin for high art. The plot is confusing, the acting is of, um, varying quality, and the dialogue gives a whole new meaning to the word cliché. But I really don’t care. This is a film about a group of ninja who kill lots of people. On that meagre ambition it is a roaring success.

Responding to some of the comments on yesterday’s review of The Green Hornet, I came to a realisation that I may have been judging the film a little bit harshly, basing my opinions on how the film compared to my expectations. While it’s true that no movie exists in a vacuum, sometimes you have to step outside of yourself a little and just see the movie for what it is. If I had watched Ninja Assassin yesterday, you would probably be in for an eight-hundred-word tirade about how much it sucked. While it does arguably suck, it does so in a completely unapologetic way. For that, I applaud it.

Also, Naomie Harris is in it. I’m still a little bit in love with her after Skyfall.

Director James McTeigue (working with The Wachowskis and Joel Silver as producers) knows exactly what kind of flick he is crafting and who his target audience is. This is a flick for boys who want to see people getting chopped up in all sorts of digitally assisted ways. If it had a scene in a strip bar, Ninja Assassin might have been a contender for the most perfect post-pub movie in the world.

It’s shit, but I really enjoyed it.