Ninja Assassin

Timelord0074.0

Trivia.1) After Raizo is captured by Interpol & chained to the wall, one of the agents looks at him & says, "He looks like he should be in a boy band." Rain started his career in the boy band Fanclub.2) Korean pop star Rain had no martial-arts experience prior to filming. He trained extensively for six months in martial arts & weapons handling with stunt & action choreographers.Timelord Thoughts.Ninja Assassin is a underrated kick ass action flick that features brilliant fight choreography is produced by Joel Silver, The Wachowskis& Grant Hill & sees the long awaited return of 80's legend Sho Kosugi playing the villainous Ozunu.The fight sequences are brutal & bloody with limbs being hacked off & a ton of blood flying towards the screen which is superbly shot & edited with amazing fight choreography that doesn't hold back on gore & certainly earns it's R rating.What i didnt expect from this movie was a interesting storyline that delivered more drama than your bog standard action flick as more attention is paid to the character Raizo & his past, newcomer Rain gives a great performance in his first starring role who has clearly trained hard in martial arts & weapon handling for this movie & it is a shame he didn't feature in more action movies because his debut here is impressive. Kudos to the scriptwriters for delivering a interesting backstory to Raizo which is quite brutal viewing but seeing Raizo struggle made me genuinely care about his fate despite his brutality at killing ninjas which makes Mortal Kombat look tame by comparison. Naomie Harris delivers a good performance as Mika Coretti, a Europol agent who gets in way over her head, Ben Miles adds support as Ryan Maslow, Mika's Europol superior while Rick Yune adds menace as Takeshi, the leader of a team sent by the Ozunu Clan. However it's 80's ninja master legend Sho Kosugi as Lord Ozunu, leader of the Ozunu Ninja Clan who completely scene steels this movie & is a complete & utter evil bastard who's batshit terrifying & the final fight he has with Raizo doesn't disappoint.Ninja Assassin didn't do big enough box office to warrant a sequel which is a shame but it has deservingly gone onto become a cult classic, if you want top notch kick ass action seeing ninjas being hacked, slashed & decapitated then this is definitely worth checking out.

DirkH3.5

Does what it says on the shuriken.

Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine3.5

I remember seeing the trailer for this movie in the cinema when I was a teenager. This led me to wait for so long. as not only I had heard mixed reviews about it, but there was also the fact that I didn’t have the best internet connection (I used dial up way til the late 00s) nor did I have a family member interested in this kinda of movie at that time.And while it was nothing new or groundbreaking, it always entertained as a sort of action-ninja thriller. I could have done it without the horrible CGI blood. While there are plenty of awesome kills and carnage, none of it works because of this.In any case, if it means anything, the cinematography is really good and you can really see there was an effort in making this look somewhat stunning, my favorite scene in this regard being the fight scene at the dojo (?). Watching everything in dub, I can’t comment on delivery, but I do like the way all the characters were written and how in many ways you didn’t know who to trust and how others had a nice story line that helped you root for them.All in all, while it has its share of problems and could have used a much more practical effects, I’d still recommend it. TODAY SCHEDULEShadow and BoneSpidermanSpiderman 2Ninja Assassin