Ninja Assassin

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

Release Date: November 25th, 2009 (wide)

Starring: Rain, Rick Yune, Naomie Harris, Ben Miles, Sho Kosugi
 
Directed by: James McTeigue (V For Vendetta)

Premise: Raizo is one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Taken from the streets as a child, he was transformed into a trained killer by the Ozunu Clan, a secret society whose very existence is considered a myth. But haunted by the merciless execution of his friend by the Clan, Raizo breaks free from them...and vanishes. Now he waits, preparing to exact his revenge.

[Gold Trumpet]

Cliches and all, this looks like a good time. Action is in my go to genre for unabashed fun and there hasn't been a decent fun action movie in a while so I'll probably end up seeing this when I go home for the holidays. If I can write anything more than four sentences about this movie, I'll be shocked.

[pete]

from the clips I'd seen, online reviews, and the track record of the filmmakers - it appears that this will continue the tradition of sloppy (aka "fast") edits that obscure everything and computer-generated swords.
which is too bad 'cause the behind the scene training videos looked liked they worked that kid for the role.

[Gold Trumpet]

Well, this movie was certainly a ride. Not as memorable or rewatchable as I would have liked, but certainly a good time and full of violence that would make even Quentin Tarantino blush over his pedestrian attempt at gore in Kill Bill. The surprise was the level of the violence in the film. There was so much blood in the fight scenes that my friend leaned over and said, "This makes me want to eat ketchup." He wasn't kidding. Blood was so ridiculously present for every kill that if a scene included more than one kill (many did), it felt like the movie was changing lens to a red soaked vision. The problem is that I began to notice the blood before anything else. Yes, the editing was intrusive and disruptive to the fight sequences, but I came back a little astonished that blood was the main arc of the fighting.

I also liked the sincerity of the story. Too often now we get action movies that are tongue-in-cheek to their own conventions, but tongue-in-check is now so normal that it's no longer what it is. I hate that Angelina Jolie in Wanted is the norm. Ninja Assassin actually attempted to keep its composure with the story (no matter how insane things got).