Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Review Rating: 7

Abandoning a centuries-old tradition of an orphan being trained as a ninja assassin, Raizo’s past follows him to America.

As much effort as the movie Gods put into making this film a great grand shadowy action of spraying blood and flying ninja stars, it manages yet again to turn into another farce of a ninja movie. And why is that? There are a few reasons, not the least of which is the fact that even in the traditional Japanese ninja training scenes the movie shows, the characters are mumbling English. Being a fan of tradition and Anime, I find this very odd. Then we have centuries of ninja tradition and clans spilling over to a few main governmental type peoples who should know better than to get involved, and of course Raizo has to come out of hiding and save the day. And the last big huge fight scene for the movie was presented in a very Deadliest Warrior fashion – guns and army-type guys versus shadowy ninjas and their throwing stars. The film actually manages to stretch that scene some distance, and make it look like the ninjas are winning at odd spots, which is again very odd.

The only real redeeming factor to the movie, besides the opening scene where an old bartender tries to warn a gang of young Yakuza ruffians about ninja as they’re being sliced into sashimi, is the man who portrays Raizo himself – the rather famous Korean performer known as Rain. There are plenty of mouth-watering scenes of Rain with his shirt off, doing pushups on his fingertips upside-down, or swinging about his weapons with practiced ease – yum!

In sum, nevermind that pesky little thing called plot – if you want things that whiz through the air with deadly accuracy, CGI sprays of blood, and violence every five minutes, Ninja Assassin is for you!