Ninja Assassin
                                 
Director: James McTeigue
Year: 2009
Rating: 6.5
If ever you get an envelope and it is filled with black sand, run - run for your life as fast as you can. Not that it will help because there is no outrunning your death. Whoever was in charge of the CGI blood must have needed a vacation after this. Buckets of it. In drops and gushes. This is an extremely violent film. It takes about two minutes to realize that when a Yakuza den is taken out by a shadow - and the heads, arms and legs go asunder in streams of blood and body parts. Ninjas of course. This is so ridiculously violent with such a pedestrian plot that I assumed it was a straight to video film, but it seems it was more than that. Produced by the Wachowskis, directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) with Rain. Not sure if he still is, but back in 2009 Rain was a huge Korean star on stage and on the screen. He impresses here with his physique and moves. Not bad for a pop star.



I sometimes wish I had been stolen as a child and raised to be a professional assassin. It looks like fun. Except for the beatings, the whips to your feet, the excruciating pain administered when you show weakness. But otherwise, you receive training that will last a lifetime. Good for all occasions. And what girl can resist a ninja. Raizo is brought up as one. Perhaps the best student but he has a weakness. He has a liking for a fellow female student who is killed for trying to leave. Then on his completing his first assignment, his Master (Sho Kosugi) tells him to execute one of the female students who also tried to leave. He can't do it. And gets kicked off the building into the water below.



And lives. Meanwhile, an Interpol Agent Mika (Naomie Harris) is looking into the Ninjas - getting too close and they are ordered to kill her. She is rescued by Raizo and the two of them go on the run. He wants to kill his old Master and every ninja in the world it seems wants to kill him. A lot of CGI blood to go with fight after fight. Decently choreographed - but the film spends too much time in flashbacks to his training - the Kung Fu TV show disease. Ben Miles also plays an Interpol agent, Rick Yune is a ninja and Anna Sawai is the young girl who was his fellow student. She has gone on to a fine career in TV (Pachinko, Shogun) as well as being a lead singer for the girl group Faky.