Pop Culture Reviews

Ninja Assassin DVD Review

Starring: Rain, Naomie Harris. Genre: Action/Martial Arts/Drama IMDb: Ninja Assassin Released: June, 2010 (New Zealand)

When the main actor in a movie’s first name is ‘Rain’, you might be forgiven for being just a tad dubious about the movie’s content. And honestly, when I first saw Ninja Assassin on the shelves at my local DVD store, I wasn’t jumping at the chance to watch it, which is kinda odd for me considering I love martial arts movies. The fact that Rain is actually a rock star in Korea and not really a serious actor didn’t help much either.

And my hunch was almost just about right. Rain’s acting ability is clearly something you really, really have to look for (with a microscope). Acting alongside Naomie Harris probably didn’t make things any easier for him considering Naomie is a seasoned actress and also one of my favourite Brit actresses (she was fantastic in 28 Days Later). But where Rain may have failed in the delivering of his lines department, he surely made up for it in spades in the action scenes and came across as something of quite a natural.

The Wachowski brothers along with Joel Silver were on production for Ninja Assassin and being the huge Matrix fan that I am, I try to look out for projects these chaps are associated to. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Ninja Assassin will make it into their top five movie projects but the martial arts sequences were actually pretty kick-ass. The only thing I couldn’t quite get a handle on was all the blood – I mean so much blood that any value the martial arts scenes may have had were unceremoniously buried under a sea of slurpy, messy, red stuff. Kinda fail.

However, all was redeemed when legendary Sho Kosugi took his place in front of the camera. I’m sorry but Sho F**CKIN Kosugi!!!!! This guy was a legend back in the day and ANY movie about ninja isn’t a movie without him in it. Yes, as you can guess, I’m a huge fan of Sho’s. I’ve seen all his movies and think he’s brilliant, even at the ripe old age of 62. His onstage presence is just so kick-ass and if you don’t believe me, try watching some of his earlier ninja movies – I recommend Enter the Ninja or Revenge of the Ninja.

So overall – Rain needs more acting lessons but kicks ass just fine and the director needs to understand that spraying everyone in the immediate area with fake blood until they’re drenched will over-shadow anything good a movie has to offer. Well almost anything – Sho Kosugi gives this movie serious brownie point cred.

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