With the overall consensus on Ninja Assassin being that it was ‘overly serious and incomprehensibly edited’, the movie seems to have failed to live up to the promise of its title. The low ratings received for the movie confirms that Hollywood will not have to endure a ninja craze.
The movie starts with a strong mix of traditional themes that get you all excited and pumped up with the opening scene, which talks of the ninja legend and then, wham bam – an explosion of violence.
Then come along these Europol agents who never stop talking and somehow the entire premise lies on the fact that ninjas do not exist – which of course every moviegoer knew and did not need any further explaining of.
The sequence of the scenes was too fast, which gave the feeling that there might have been a version of the story that made sense, but this one seemed to have been shortened to such an extremity that was more or less incomprehensible. The lengthy explanations and rigmaroles could have easily been done away with, which would have then at least then made this movie a better watch.
The movie has a few interesting bits which were the ninja preparations, the legend and the training scenes. Embracing something of a comic book feel, the effects however were sadly poor with CGI blood that looked absolutely terrible – although the killings were fabulously and outrageously gory.
The generic cop talk in the movie slowed down the pace of the movie and made it boring with terminology commonly used in TV shows making an appearance. As one critic put it: “This is one ninja flick that should have remained in the shadows…”