This is a movie snack… it is the fried-chicken of movies. Little Drama, no surprise, and a whole lot of ACTION. the 7th art is about entertainment, and this movie reminds us of just that. So if you want to be entertained, laugh out loud, and barely believe what you just saw on the screen this is your movie. 99 Minutes of fighting interlaced with just enough acting to set up the next fight, and “ding ding” next round, FIGHT! This is not a Chuck Norris, or Steven Seagal flick. The hero gets his rear-end beaten several times throughout the hour and 30 minutes.
The critics that get paid by the media outlets have all bashed this Ninja Assassin movie. Here is my question, do you really think that anyone was going for a nomination in the best drama category with a movie called Ninja Assassin? Now that we got that out of way. This is a very enjoyable experience at the theater. You need not try to figure out the plot, in fact this is a very WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) movie.
27 year old, South Korean new found star Rain a.k.a Ji Hoon Jung (2008 Speed Racer, 2006 Saibogujiman kwenchana) is Raizo, a ninja who was trained by a fraternity of assassins. He was enrolled as an orphan, and through some experiences in which he was made to choose a side, he became a ninja-hunter, seeking revenge on those who made him a dangerous one-man army. Enter Mika, played by British belle Naomie Harris (2006 Miami Vice, 2008 Street Kings), who is investigating the Assassins ring and ends up on the hit list herself. Her Boss Maslow, Ben Miles another 2008 Speed Racer veteran, tries to protect her while using her as bait to save his own behind. That is it. That is the entire plot of Ninja Assassin.
James McTeigue is a director who has mastered his genre. His target audience is clearly cut and it does not contain film critics from NY Times or the LA Times. He is the director who brought us 2005 V for Vendetta, and was an assistant director in 1994 Street Fighter, the Matrix Trilogy, and 2002 Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. He is unapolegetic, and I am happy. This is a style of movie that needs to be made. It is not everyday that I was to be dramatically challenged… sometimes I just need a good dose of action, explosions, and fights; none of which needs to be believable. In Ninja Assassin James McTeigue gives us a great action flick.
The casting is not phenomenal. It seems that the casting crew just salvaged whatever they could from the Speed Racer Movie as James McTeigue was its director. A happy appearance is made by Randall Duk Kim (The Keymaker from 2003 The Matrix Reloaded, 2005 Memoirs of a Geisha) here as a tattoo master who is quite verbose. Sung Kang (Han Lue from 2006 The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and 2009 Fast & Furious) is also here for a brief appearance. Naomie Harris does her best with the script she is given. She is famous for the swamp witch/fortune teller in Pirates 2, and Pirates 3 (2006 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, 2007 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End). For Kylie Goldstein, this is her first major motion picture, and she gives a performance here out of her typical Sesame Street arena. I wish her all the best in the years to come. Veteran Ninja choreographer and stunt master Shô Kosugi plays Ozunu. Other stars include French-Vietnamese Linh Dan Pham (2007 Pars vite et reviens tard), TV second-hand man Stephen Marcus,
