Movie Review: Ninja Assassin

Director James McTeigue along with the Wachaowski Brothers made the magnificent 'V for Vendetta' three years ago, to think the same team has doled out Ninja Assassin, an atrocious and brainless disaster is staggering.

This so-called Ninja revenge story is simply silly, loud and morbid. As the movie plays on it gets increasingly hard to care about anything that goes on here, quite unlike in 'V for Vendetta'. What's more, you hardly get to see anything good on the screen, as McTeigue turns down almost all of the light and resorts to quickfire editing. Even the enemy Ninjas are reduced to smoke and are only seen when the hero is dicing them. We don't just want to see fake CGI blood in full zoom, if you're offering gratuitous scenes of beheadings and flying body parts, at least let us savor the gore.

The Wachaoskis didn't write the story of Ninja Assassin, and it shows. V's introduction dialogue with Natalie Portman was itself worth the price of admission in the 2006 film, but here it is like owning a video game that your bully friends won't let you play. Raizo (Korean pop star Rain) is a 'very deadly assassin'. 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 after his girlfriend is murdered by the Clan, Raizo breaks free from them and goes AWOL to exact revenge.

Meanwhile Europol agent Mika (Naomi Harris) stumbles upon a money trail linking several political murders to an underground network of untraceable Ninja assassins. As expected, her investigation makes her a target and Raizo saves her from certain death-by-Ninja-pwnage. From there on the duo embark on a series of madcap stupidity, complete with Ninja stars hurled about, bullets used to blow up buildings etc. This could as well have been a Rajnikath movie, and it would have been a much more entertaining film.

On a brighter note there are two decent action sequences, the stealth movement and dark red droplets of CGI blood are intriguing at first, but the blurry mess of noise and darkness is just wearisome. Ninja Assassin is quite avoidable, you're better off playing Mortal Kombat or Ninja Gaiden 2 on the Xbox 360.