KRAMMER'S REVIEW
What is a ninja assassin? Isn’t that a bit redundant? Is there such thing as say a ninja florist? Or is that like a singer actress meaning not being good at either?
That is why this documentary style comedy/drama simply had to be made. There are a lot of unanswered questions out there about ninjas and this movie answers almost none of them. For example, what do ninjas eat? I would like to eat like a ninja. Do karate men really bleed on the inside? Apparently not as the single consistent element in this movie was the buckets and buckets of blood. Do ninjas sleep? How do ninjas feel about cats? Do ninjas ever get sad?
What better setting to try and resolve these issues than Berlin – ground zero for ninjas?
The movie ostensibly is about a kid taken off of the streets and trained in “Asia” to be a ninja assassin. He is trained to look like a ninja, smell like a ninja, and most importantly, to dress like a ninja. He walks on fire, eats broken glass and in general fucks shit up. Despite this, he still enjoys a stroll in the bonsai garden. The sensei here is no Mr. Miyagi. Instead of having his students try to catch flies with chop sticks, he shoves those chop sticks up you know where.
Problems begin when dumb ass Europol starts sticking their nose in where it does not belong. Like the combined police force of the European continent could hope to withstand the ninja tide. Stupid!
I learned some stuff about ninjas that I did not know. They no longer are throwing those gay smoke ball things on the ground. Now, they basically teleport. I guess they are just that fast. They can also hide anywhere, even in plain sight. There could be a ninja in my shoe right now and I would have no fucking idea.
Similar to the A Team’s unending ammo supply, they also have an unlimited number of throwing stars for tossin’. Pretty handy that. I also did not realize that these hurled throwing starts sound like gun shots. Scary!
This movie is “good” like G.I. Joe was “good.” It has all of the blood of Kill Bill but none of that annoying gravitas or plot. The film’s motto is “fear not the weapon but the hand that wields it.” Yeah. This movie changes everything.
Seriously, I am inspired. I am working on a screen play for the sequel. I am still trying to figure out who will be the lead. I am down to either Adam Sandler or Bette Midler. I will probably end up flipping a coin. I am thinking about calling it “Ninja Assassin 2.” In the sequel, my ninja related questions will be answered. As a tease, ninjas do get sad, really sad.
NUTSON'S REVIEW
Remember when you played Pitfall and thought videogame graphics had reached their apex? Then you played Mortal Combat and thought it was so realistic you were going to shit the pants of the guy next to you? And then came Madden, and Halo, and Call of Duty.
Now think back to old school ninja movies. Ninjas would throw shuriken. They would walk really quietly. They would make a whoosh sound when they turned their heads. And you thought nothing could be cooler than a ninja.
Well it took a couple pollocks to show us the way. The Wachowski brothers showed us that there is something cooler than a ninja. A ninja assassin. Whoa. Right? Just think about that for a second.
Ninja Assassin stars a nice fellow named Rain. You might remember him from How Stella Got Her Groove Back, or The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. In this movie he is raised in some crazy china camp for ninja kids. But when the one lady ninja gets killed for some reason, he goes mental and then it’s on.
The movie is set in Berlin. Obviously. But no one speaks German there. They just sit in lawn chairs on the sidewalks and get killed by ninjas. All you really need to know is that it costs 100 pounds of gold to pay for an assassination done by a ninja. But of course you would know that because like the agents at Europol you’ve been monitoring all the big name assassinations lately.
Apparently the dude who wrote the script got the whole thing done in a weekend. That is not surprising since the dialogue flowed like shit through a gigantic block of lead.
For some reason critics didn’t like this movie. One such douche wrote “Whatever the case, McTeigue (as well as the Wachowskis) have really taken a step down with this one. It's a wild mess, and it commits the worst crime a messy film can make -- it completely lacks entertainment. It's an overly violent, unintelligible bore."
I guess this so called ‘critic’ was stupid enough to watch the entire movie. The first 5 minutes are just below average. The rest of the movie is like getting titty slapped by Rosanne Barr for 90 minutes after she spent the afternoon rolling around in donkey shit and roofing nails. Which is to say it is somewhere south of enjoyable and just north of slamming your cock and balls in an oven door.
What most critics missed was that Ninja Assassin showed ninjas flitting around like shadows, curing their own wounds by making queefy gestures with their hands, and swinging around a chain – which is evidently the most devastating ninja weapon of all time. Had they seen that, they would not have been so quick to call this movie a ‘bore’ and would instead call it what it is. A fucking cottage cheese (small curd) filled pustule on the underside of Greg Louganis’ chlorine scented wiener.
I give this movie one of a possible five muffin tops.
