‘Ninja Assassin’ full of violence but empty when it comes to
plot
‘Ninja Assassin’ starring Rain, Naomie Harris and Ben Miles
Adam Breen wrote in his column
”
Breen Damage
”
last week about going to see a chick flick with his wife
– to gain control of the remote or garner support for an
upcoming action flick he wants to see. Well, the same bargains
sometimes happen in my house since my sister and parents often
accompany me to the movies I see on the weekends. My sister is a
fan of action flicks and horror films. My mom like
s romantic comedies and my dad likes melodramas, Westerns and
anything with bodily humor in it. I like a lot of different movies
so I am usually open to
‘Ninja Assassin’ full of violence but empty when it comes to plot
‘Ninja Assassin’ starring Rain, Naomie Harris and Ben Miles
Adam Breen wrote in his column “Breen Damage” last week about going to see a chick flick with his wife – to gain control of the remote or garner support for an upcoming action flick he wants to see. Well, the same bargains sometimes happen in my house since my sister and parents often accompany me to the movies I see on the weekends. My sister is a fan of action flicks and horror films. My mom likes romantic comedies and my dad likes melodramas, Westerns and anything with bodily humor in it. I like a lot of different movies so I am usually open to seeing anything – even when I am not really sure what it is about.
That was the case with “Ninja Assassin,” which opened this week in the smallest theater in Gilroy. I think the theater only seated 20 people and there were maybe a dozen of us there for a Sunday matinee.
These were the facts I knew about the movie when I entered the theater – the main actor is named Rain, no last name, and the movie had the word ninja in the title. I mistakenly thought it was going to be a martial arts movies along the lines of “Hero” or “House of the Flying Daggers.” Within the first few minutes of the movie I realized I was mistaken when nearly a dozen people were killed by a variety of beheadings and limb severings.
The plot itself as concocted by Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski is basically a loosely-formed storyline to get the hero from Fight A to Fight B and so on. Mika (Naomie Harris) and her colleague at Europol (which I assume is supposed to be kind of like Interpol) discover a break in a recent mass killing that they think might be connected to an ancient ninja clan. Maslow (Ben Miles, who played Patrick on the British comedy series “Couplings” and was hilarious in that) warns Mika that the last agent to pursue the Ninjas ended up kicked out for mental instability.
But Mika, a forensic researcher, can’t resist it. So she sets out to talk to the widow of the last agent to take on the ninjas. There she finds a surveillance tape that shows an Asian man coming to talk to the agent shortly before he is attacked by multiple people dressed all in black. Ninja stars and swords fly everywhere. Soon Mika and Maslow are being followed and she thinks she has met her end when Ninjas show up in her apartment.
Fortunately Raizo (Rain) turns out to be a good Ninja who has been fighting his clan ever since he betrayed them years ago. The only redeeming part of the film are the flashbacks to Raizo’s time in the snowy mountains in some Asian country (the filmmakers never make it very clear where the Ninjas train). He was an orphan who was taken by the clan as a young boy. And apparently the clans take children from all over because there were a bunch of Asian-looking kids as well as some with blond hair and blue eyes. All the children who are trained are taken before the age of 10 and they are trained without mercy to be assassins. Raizo, however, is not like the other children and he finds a friend in Kiriko. Kiriko is a young girl who doesn’t always meet the expectations of their trainer. The two cannot communicate openly, but help each other when their Ninja master has been especially harsh.
When Raizo meets Mika, he tells her the story of how he came to betray his clan and that they have been after him ever since. The Ninjas are supposed to be so well trained that they can follow a person’s scent, like wolves. So Raizo and Mika can never stay very many steps ahead. The movie continues with plenty of bloodshed and not too much else. At least the blood was phony enough that it didn’t cause too many people in the theater to cringe. This movie is one to leave to teenage boys and fans of messy videogames. For anyone looking for a real martial arts movie, see something directed by Yimou Zhang, or better yet, an original kung fu movie from the ’80s.
