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Monday, 29 April 2013 09:53

Ninja Assassin

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ninja assassinBlood.  In amazing amounts and frequency.  

That's one of the lasting impressions of this movie penned by Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski, produced by Joel Silver, and the Wachowskis, and directed by James McTeigue.

Starring Korean pop star Rain, this story of a ninja turned against his adopted martial family (Ozunu clan) and actively working to stop his fellow ninjas from committing assassination for 100 pounds of gold (a holdover from ancient times) this movie starts in massive amounts of blood, decapitation and amputation, and ends in rivers of blood, decapitation and amputation with a lot of the same in-between.  

Video game.    That's your second thought and impression. With all the good and bad that engenders.

Ultra-violent and dark.  In all ways including a lot of barely-seen fights that are too dark to appreciate properly, and hand-held cameras that jerk the action from one black shadow to another.

And then finally, well-executed and impressive in spots with fight scenes every bit as good as anything ever filmed.

Rain, the lead actor, would remind you of an Asian version Justin Bieber.  A huge pop star in Korea, like Bieber he seems too slight and ethereal to play an assassin.  But even as preternaturally beautiful as he is for a man, underneath that slight-looking frame he is buffed and cut to within a microslice of human body perfection.  This and his real martial arts training allows him to be totally believable as Raizo, who as a young boy is kidnapped and brutally trained to be the best of the best in ninja assassination.  

Because of a situation with a fellow (female) trainee Raizo turns on his ninja family and begins to actively try to stop them.  His journey takes him to actress Naomie Harris who is a CIA/NSA/Europol/does it really mattter? analyst who thinks she sees a pattern in some recent assassinations that involve an ancient group of ninjas.  The worlds collide, the two bond and fall in love (sorta - not really much chemistry there) and the action comes almost non-stop, fast and furious.  

 

Ozunu, the evil patriarch of the clan who dispatches familial pride and punishment in equal measure, is played to good effect by legendary martial artist/actor Sho Kosugi who is trained in shindo jinen-ryu, kendo, judo, aikido (to mention a few)rain and although he doesn't do much until the end in the way of fighting, he is wholly capable and believable as a ninja who cannot be defeated.  He is Raizo's Darth Vader and is determined at any cost to exact a price from Raizo for his betrayal, for turning away from the Dark Side.

Ninjas come with a mythology like vampires and werewolves (and mean-ass high school girls (joking).)  In the movies "Underworld" and "Twilight" the standard mythologies were expanded and changed to good effect.  Same here with "NInja Assassin."  Although the basic, standard stuff is still in place (black outfits, throwing stars, etc.) other interesting bits were added.  There's a training scene reminiscent of the TV series "Kung Fu" where a young Raizo has to walk a path without disturbing a spring-loaded plank.  When he does, he's whipped on the the soles of his feet until he bleeds to show that even the slightest mistake has consequences.  Also, some training sequences show the young ninjas being blindfolded while they fight to be able to extend their senses when necessary.  And, in the very beginning, ninjas attack a Yakusa headquarters but first send an envelope of black sand to tell the gangsters that they have been targeted.  It's a cool moment when the man doing tattoos on these thugs recognizes the sand and shows his wound that should have penetrated his heart.  Except that his heart is on the other side of his chest and he lives to tell the tale - at least for a few more minutes until the ninjas attack and like the ghosts they represent, kill all the gangsters in a bloodbath of severed limbs and decapitations.  Scenes and moments like this keep the mythos intact but attempt to expand it to some cooler ideas of how to deal with the character of ninjas.  Doing this also increases the awesomeness of Raizo who we know has the same skills.

Speaking of skills, the martial art most used in the film is ninjitsu (I think) which features a lot of weapons including traditional ninja weaponry like throwing stars and katanas.  Also used (impressively) quite a bit is the kyoketsu-shoge (basically a dual-edged knife on a rope/chain) that is wielded by Rain's character and the other ninjas to slice and dice through opponents.

The fight scenes are extended and terribly well-choreographed for the most part.  A great one happens as the bloody action spills out from a secret government location and into the street while Rain is being chased and chases ninjas through rainy traffic.  The leaping, killing and dying ninjas are like otherwordly demons and the heart-stopping traffic zooming by Rain and his adoptive (evil) ninja brother (Rick Yune) while they battle is insanely shot and just spectacular.  It reminded me again how the Hong Kong influence has made these films so much better.

What didn't always work was the way the fight scenes were shot and this is a personal thing mostly.  The camera jerks so much and the scenes are so cut up that you never really get a sense of the fighters.  An interspersing of less frenetic Steadi-Cam moments would have been nice.  Also, since ninjas are most-effective in the dark, there was a lot you just couldn't see and that made the scenes frustrating to watch at times.  One scene in particular in Naoemi Harris' apartment was only illuminated by a handheld flashlight and was ridiculous at best for most of it because you never really got a sense of what was happening. 

ninja assassinLike "Speed Racer" - the Wachowskis previous film to this, and "The Raven" McTeigue's film after this, not a lot of people loved this film.  It was a box office disappointment.  Too dark, too violent, not enough story, inconsistent story narrative, inconsistent ninja mythology...all contribute to varying degrees of un-involvement with characters and storyline.  I found it a bit silly that seemingly every character had to have his (or her) limbs severed to be dispatched. I've never seen so much mutilation in anything short of a...well, yes, a video game.  They could have cut (ahem) 90% of it out and still made the fight scenes interesting and spectacular.

Rain is honestly fantastic both physically and emotionally - but even he struggles at times with inconsistencies with his character.  Perhaps it was because there were two writers, four producers (actually fifteen but only four that wielded creative control) and a lot of muddling and changing of this storyline that this film felt like there were parts that didn't match tonally with other parts and left you grappling with your commitment to story and character.    Raizo, for example, seems to change quite a bit once he begins his adventure with Mika.  And he does something so stupid at one point that it was hard to process given who he is and who he is fighting.  Some could argue that it was the influence of Mika, Naoemi Harris' character, that began to change him.  I would tend to disagree since she was only a part of his life for a brief time.  The tonal change is apparent - the reasons why aren't.

J. Michael Straczynski told the OC Screenwriters when he spoke in 2012 that he had basically a weekend to "fix" the script.  He didn't get into a lot of detail about his contributions so it's not easy to say what was changed.  But the fact that it was shows that there were enough perceived problems for the producers to ask for a last minute rewrite.

ninja assassinI think it failed to garner an audience mainly because of the ending which feature so many climactic battles that you grow weary of watching Rain (Raizo) fight one supernatural, unbeatable opponent after another. And on that note, supernatural is another problem.  Raizo suddenly takes on these ninja powers of superspeed and stamina that seem to come out of nowhere.  He looks like comic book hero The Flash with a katana.  Yeah, he is shown with some amazing powers in the form of the ability to take insane abuse and punishment, appear from nowhere, and also completely heal a kidney-to-kidney belly wound in a matter of hours but he defeats his adoptive father by using a skill that has never really been explored in the earlier parts of the film.  It feels tacked on and because of this, contributes to an ending that leaves you wanting.

The cardinal sin of any film is blowing the ending because that is last impression that the audience has and it had better not be negative.  This one unfortunately is to large degree.  Blood is blood when it's flowing in (and out) of your veins and symbolically in the form of familial loyalty; the final confrontation between Rain and the man who shaped him leaves you with a lot less emotional involvement than it should.  It's also flat considering that the love interest (Naoemi Harris) gets stabbed through the heart in the process of Raizo defeating the bad guy.  There's a twist to this but I won't spoil it.  It actually redeems the ending a bit.  Also, the coda, as Raizo climbs a wall that he was forbidden to when he was younger (and has some emotional charge to it) works.  But somehow these small moments are not enough to make you feel good about the ending as a whole.

The film is replete with breathtaking, heart-stopping action in many forms.  It has a decent, serviceable story with good, dramatic moments in it, and the acting is solid for a film of this type.  Rain, as expressed, is fantastic - a true star for both his martial arts skills, believability, and his quiet and powerful acting.

If you put aside the unnecessary oceans of blood, the brutal and at-times silly violence, the jerky, dark cameras, and occasionally inconsistent story narrative then you should find this movie entertaining as hell...

Despite its flaws, I did.

Read 3468 times Last modified on Wednesday, 05 August 2015 16:17
Published in Front Page Item - old
Mark Sevi

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