Europol researcher Mika Coretti (Naomie Harris) has stumbled on something few around her, even her open-minded boss agent Ryan Maslow (Ben Miles), are willing to believe. Ninjas still exist, nine ancient clans of them sending out trained assassins to do the dirty work of any company or nation willing to pay them the required hundred pounds of gold.

Raizo (Rain) prepares to strike in Warner Bros' Ninja Assassin

One of the deadliest of these lethal killers is Raizo (Rain). Stolen off the streets as a child and raised by stern taskmaster Ozunu (Shô Kosugi), the silent warrior has found away to steal away from his clan hoping to exact revenge for past evils especially one involving a fellow female ninja he may have loved. Now, with the help of Mika, now might just be the time for Raizo and Ozunu to meet up once more, the fates of all of them intertwined into a single knot only blood will be able to untie.

Ninja Assassin is not for the fate of heart. Unbelievably violent and unrelentingly graphic, this hyperactive martial arts action spectacular isn’t afraid to slice and dice to the point even the most hardened gore-hound might find themselves having to ask for their very own barf bag. Limbs fly, throats are cut and heads get chopped clean away, the film a seemingly never-ending series of conflicts and escapes pushing the bounds of good taste all the way to their breaking point.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Director James McTeigue, along way from the emotional and dramatic complexities of V for Vendetta, and producers Andy and Larry Wachowski obviously had a great time testing the boundaries of decency, their B-movie arguably the most sensationalistic and energetically exuberant Hollywood-made martial arts spectacular ever produced.

On the flip side, as fun as this throwaway comic book feeling trifle can be for a film that’s barely 90-minutes long there’s hardly anything substantive going on within making it resonate all that deeply. Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski’s (Changeling) screenplay is so razor-thin it almost doesn’t exist at all, the narrative just a series of excuses allowing for Raizo to face-off against a seemingly unending horde of ninjas sent to kill him.

The Europol subplot is particularly silly. Harris and Miles are left with little to do other then look surprised, cower in fear or try and act tough, and thanks to the thinness of the material and the complete disregard the filmmakers apparently have for them neither is able to do any of those things particularly well. I kept getting the feeling that the only reason their characters even existed was to allow for ninjas to square off against platoons of Special Forces soldiers, that visual having a video game appeal fanboys will probably squeal out loud over.

Be all that as it may this movie can be a ton of fun. The opening sequence is a graphically disgusting stunner, while the final two-part fight between Rain and Rick Yune and then Rain and the legendary Kosugi is well worth the wait. McTeigue keeps things at such a breakneck pace he does manage to mask many of the script’s more egregious shortcomings, while the CGI effects that sadly dominate trailer aren’t near as annoying or as omnipresent as I feared they would be.

I’m not going to try and say Ninja Assassin is anything close to being a good piece of violent pop entertainment. It’s a throwaway piece, a silly and over the top time waster that the filmmakers probably made because more because it sounded like fun than it did anything else. Thankfully, for those open to such things the resulting epic can be a lot of dumb blood-soaked fun. Just make sure your brain stays checked at the turnstile otherwise it might just get cut out of your head by haphazardly thrown Chinese Star. 

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)  

Additional Links:

• Ninja Assassin Theatrical Trailer