GUEST REVIEW: Ninja Assassin

Today we have the ultra extreme exclusive, wonderful, AMAZING pleasure of having a world class guest review by the great "Ryan". Please enjoy.

~ Don

Let me start this review off by saying that I saw Ninja Assassin the day before Thanksgiving, almost a week ago. This is important for a couple reasons: one- I've had AMPLE time to let my emotions settle, two- I'll be reviewing purely from mental aftertaste, after my brain's been tainted by the thorough making-fun-of we laid into the movie after our screening.
I assure you HOWEVER that I have culled the BEST points for this review, it won't all be teasing, because that would be useless to YOU the reader. Also I fear and respect this blog's overlord and quiver to think what he'll do if disappointed.

SO BAM- Put yourself in my shoes: Your on Thanksgiving break, on your way to see NINJA goddamn ASSASSIN with your cousin, brother and friend on opening day. You LIKE the wachowski's movies [They're producing this], EVEN SPEED RACER (not so matrix 3, but their hearts were in the right place). And your willing to forget the fact that you didn't really enjoy director James McTeigue's adaptation of V for Vendetta. Also Predator is one of your favorite movies of all time (just so you're deeper in my psyche).
So I'm in a great mood. Every single bit of me wants to love Ninja Assassin. A movie about a Ninja assassin. How could you possibly fuck up a movie called NINJA ASSASSIN? I thought to myself. How indeed, well read on my friends:

Lemme summarize the plot so I can more thoroughly make fun of it. Spoilers and whatever:
Ninjas are fierce creatures of the night that can move between shadows. For the past 1000 years or something they've been accepting 100 pounds of gold as standard fee for assassinations. Somehow this leads an American forensic reporter (or something) to discovering the secret order of Ninja Assassins that have remained hidden for one million years until now. So her and her cheeky British interpol agent boyfriend start to unsettle some shit. One things leads to another Ninjas want to kill them next. So the reporter girl is saved from the ninjas by our protagonist, rogue ninja, and all around hottie: Korean pop-star Rain. The rest of the movie is divided between Rain killing the fuck out of an inexplicable endless horde of demon-ish Ninjas and flashbacks painstakingly filling us in on why Rain wanted to defeat the ninja clan and how all Ninjas are trained orphans or something. BIG SPOILER ALERT: He defeats the Ninja clan.
A COUPLE OF QUALMS (in order of recall):
-The fucking point of the movie is that Rain is the baddest mother fucker of them all, but not ONE of the flashbacks shows young Rain excelling, standing out among his ninja orphan peers, or really doing anything but whining. Later on in the movie this dude is unbeatable.
-They done did something that really pisses me off in a vengeance flick by introducing a love interest just to kill her. It was pretty clear from the beginning that this was that girl's purpose was to die. Their relationship seems non-existent and forced. SO in short, the REASON for Rain going rogue and risking the rest of his life in this vengeance flick written like an silly after-thought. Rendering most of Rain's rage the rest of the movie impotent.
-SOMEHOW everyone dies from interpol dies in a ninja attack EXCEPT the reporter girls interpol-buddy. Which is REALLY lucky for the plot.
-In the flashbacks its pretty clear that the head bad-ninja is training a single group of about 30 orphans. The rest of the movie is FLOODED by an endless wave of faceless ninjas that I guess were there and off-camera the whole time.
-Another moment of weird injected intensity is when they outfitted Rain with a nemesis, 3 quarters of the way through a movie. Somewhere along the line some ninja on Rain's tail starts calling 'Little Brother' and later on delivers some of the cheesiest lines in the movie, just in time for the audience to understand that this is an important bag guy.

SO ENOUGH of that, the story is fucked. The acting is silly and at some times painful. Almost impossible to overlook, because it took a lot of the zest away from the action, but WHAT ABOUT THE ACTION. What about the driving force behind the movie?
I'd say the most innovative point of the movie were the shurikens. They were flying like bullets and ripping people to shreds like machine gun fire. (except for when they were hitting Rain), but that shit was prety cool.
The blood was the second innovation, digitally enhanced to splurt and fly further than practical effects could allow. At first its cool as hell, but soon you realize that the buckets of blood pouring out of people's appendages isn't hitting the ground. A room where 4 guys were just dismembered has pretty much no blood on the floor. Takes away the oomph.
Sometimes it works.
That actually sums up all the action sequences: sometimes they work. There is some cool stuff every once and while.

So see it, why not right? I mean- what do you want from a movie called Ninja Assassin? They failed trying to get us to really feel for any of the characters, but the action is eye-candy. Bloody bloody eye-candy.

THANK you.

PS- Two other dumb things: the ninjas hiss like vampires in the shadows and somehow a legion of humvees make it to the top of an isolated ninja mountain. So, you know, remember to hate those things.