Ninja Assassin

To say “Ninja Assassin” is “so bad it’s funny” is to misunderstand the extent to which this violent and confused baboon of a movie is “bad.” Though some might try to give this latest martial arts melodrama the benefit of the doubt and call it “ironic,” “Ninja Assassin” has few fleeting moments of conscious self-deprecation. Its only redeeming characteristic, its constant flow of gasp-inducing, gory fight scenes, is undermined and rendered largely impotent by the frailty of its plot and characters.

Indeed, there is an unmistakable contrast between the visuals and the narrative of “Ninja Assassins.” The last time director James McTeigue teamed up with writers Andy and Larry Wachowski—in 2005 for the blockbuster “V for Vendetta”—he had an engaging plot for a foundation on which to construct a dazzling series of cityscapes, underground lairs, and fight scenes. This time around, however, the Wachowski brothers produce the film and leave the writing to rookie Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote the script for last year’s decidedly middling Clint Eastwood offering, “Changeling.” While McTeigue successfully creates a fantastical set of fight scenes, spouting and squelching in their admittedly gratuitous gore, Sand and Straczynski doom the movie to failure with a storyline so one-dimensional that one wishes it were comical.

The movie opens with an elderly tattoo artist imprinting the image of a dragon onto a mob boss. As he hacks away at the mobster’s skin in vivid onscreen detail, a telegram arrives filled with black dust. The old man recoils in horror, explaining that the last time he saw such a letter, the mocking laughter of his employers was “drowned in blood.” Suddenly, a series of goons are inexplicably beheaded, halved, and cut limb by limb in rapid succession. No sword or swordsman is visible, only swoosh sounds and silver flickers. Blood spatters the walls, ceiling, floors, and the camera itself as the old man murmurs, “He is a demon, straight from hell.” In a stupefying 60 seconds, every character is dead save a lone ninja, who ends the scene by killing the prophetical senior citizen.

The movie then begins switching between two subplots: that of maverick Europol agent Mika (Naomie Harris) and that of ninja prodigy and outcast Raizo (played by Korean pop superstar Rain). While Mika disobeys her boss Maslow (Ben Miles) and follows a money trail leading toward a mythical set of Eastern ninja assassin clans, Raizo struggles through a series of flashbacks about his orphan past. As a child, he had been taken in by the centuries-old Ozunu clan and trained to become a ninja; after witnessing the clan murder his love interest, Raizo broke down, killed scores of his former brethren, and escaped—and he has been on the lam ever since.

The Ozunu clan discovers Mika’s research and only a sudden appearance of Raizo saves her from certain death-by-ninja. The two plots then merge and the rest of the film is little more than a dramatic chase scene between Raizo and Mika, dozens of ninjas, and hundreds of Europol officers.

To be fair, this elongated chase is punctuated by a series of fight scenes as mesmerizing as the movie’s opening. While these scenes are some compensation for the rest of the film, they too lack suspense and intrigue. The interactions between Raizo and his beloved at the start of the film are so laughably flat that his attempts at revenging her death fail to inspire even a shred of empathy. Mika’s motivations for tracking down the Ozunu are even less clear. Thus, each fight is reduced to a lovely but meaningless dance that is devoid of contextual excitement.

“Ninja Assassin” is not entirely unpleasant. One cannot help but laugh at the film’s ridiculous premise—the struggles between omnipotent modern-day ninjas and rogue European police officers—and marvel at its terrifying violence. It is a movie whose narrative faults are very easy to mistake for lovable farce or parody. “Ninja Assassin,” however, is no joke: it’s an honest failure.