— Movie Review — Ninja Assassin
Posted in Movie Review on December 6th, 2009 by – Be the first to commentI got out to see the new movie Ninja Assassin the day after Thanksgiving but, I kinda forgot to post this. Lets see. it was pretty damn good. I didn’t know what to expect from it other than it was was gonna be decent. It was a big budget Hollywood movie and as such, was laden with all of the tricks and effects expected from a modern action movie. There 
hasn’t been a credible (American) Ninja Movie in years, about since the late 1980’s.
Ninja Assassins was based around the premise that there are a few clans and that they have taken about the same amount of money for thousands of years or some ungodly amount of time. They work for world governments just as they always have. Its an interesting take on why the clans survive and answers why there are still Ninja, which is where most Ninja Movies fail. Think about American Ninja… Why would there be an American Ninja? Really?
This movie has made an attempt to redefine what ninja look like and move like. Where as previous Ninja movies, never really showed how they move or showed thier movement from the Ninja’s perspective, this one shows the Ninja movement from the Victims perspective. What does this mean? Instead of the camera following the Ninja as he moves around the room getting ready to kill someone, the camera sits and looks into the dark room as people die around the camera. You see the ninja as they zoom accross the screen in a Matrix-ess manner.
I believe this is the most dramatic revision of the Ninja in decades. Seriously! This is in the same way that Blade redefined the Vampire by making them human mutations as opposed to some cult monster that has no known origin (created by evil). You can see the Matrix effects in this flick even down to a scene as one falls off a building and it looks just as when Neo was fighting Smith in the final episode and is punched out of the sky and falls to the earth. No doubt the same individuals created the sequence.
I would give it 4 Ninja throwing stars. It is not as revolutionary as the Matrix (not even close) but it is a pretty good movie for what it is. A momentary get away from reality.
