A fair and nuanced review

[fredericks]

Ninja Assassin is an awful movie. An awful, AWFUL movie. I mean, the thing is truly dreadful and deserves to only be shown to drunk and/or high folks at midnight showings across the country for the full MST3K experience.

In conclusion: homg, so bad!

Comments

[army-kitten.livejournal.com]

i read a review of it in the shitty local paper and it was unclear from that exactly why it was so terrible. your review has definitely cleared things up, however. XD

i'm disappointed, though. i was hoping that with a combination of wachowski brothers and rain that it might be kind of exciting.

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

Heh. Here's what was good about the movie.
1. The first five minutes (sans the ridiculous dialogue).
2. Shirtless Rain posing during convenient rainstorms (happened at least three times).

Here's what was shitty:
1. In a nutshell, everything else-

a. The dialogue. It was stilted and written as if by a set of non-native speakers attempting to be lyrical and enigmatic but instead ending up sounding hokey.

b. The PLOT. Which, why am I evening griping about that? Because I saw another movie with the potential to be horrible called Underworld, and even though the actual story was cheesy the actors and director pulled the damn thing off. Here's the plot in a nutshell: a random American woman working for/in Interpol randomly decides to investigate ninja assassins, who have been historically hired by countries to kill unwanted elements. A ninja tries to kill her but is stopped by rogue ninja Rain. There's the vaguest suggestion of sexual spark, but the vapidness of the actress and the racial divide of the two characters in question most likely makes it all taboo (she's black, he's Asian; that shit didn't work between Aaliyah and Jet Li (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165929/) so it sure as hell ain't flying here). Rain had a fellow girl ninja that tried to escape from their orphanage/ninja training ground when the two of them were younger and was killed, and so now he's all angry at the ninja establishment and, you know, rogue. So there's a big showdown with ninjas and Interpol and pirates, the vapid agent gets stabbed through the heart, Rain rallies and kills the head ninja/father figure/cool ass Japanese dude, but WAIT! - psyche ya mike! vapid agent's heart is on the right side of her body so she's completely fine except for the fact that she totally wasn't up on her tetanus shots and will most likely die from lockjaw if she doesn't bleed out first. And then Rain decides to randomly climb a building in the ninja training complex and stare out into the middle distance as a wind machine blows his hair back. THE END.

Told you it was bad.

c) The acting. We have vapid agent, played by a pretty black woman who seemed one step away from reading her lines off a cue card. Then Rain, Korean pop star, who kept throwing out his catchphrase "let's go" at the most hilarious moments, and who was done no favors by the unEnglish English dialogue. The only guy who wasn't completely horrible was the head ninja assassin fuddy-duddy.

d) The pacing. For a movie this ridiculous to work they had to have a lot more action and a lot less talking. They'd have bits where Rain trained (pointless, as he did his training in his bloody kitchen of a slumlord apartment), and then bits in Interpol (or MI5 or Scotland Yard or wherever the hell) and then fights. Bloody horrific fights, yes, good business, but then they'd have more dialogue or more attempts to patch up the gaping holes in the ridiculous plot and you ended up saying to yourself "God, just start with the blood squirting already."

It's a bad movie. Horrendously bad. Trust me.

[army-kitten.livejournal.com]

mwaha! i was actually being serious when i said your short review cleared things up for me. i think it's a combination of 1) my shitty local paper was trying so hard to be well-written or something that it stopped far short of saying, "this movie simply sucks." 2) i trust your opinion and your taste.

but thank you for the further clarification. it does sound like an awful, awful waste of time. i feel bad for rain... his US career does not seem to be taking off.(T__T)

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

I think movies like this might end up being Rain's niche, as his English still comes across as being learned phonetically and his delivery is not so great. He needs to find one that's well-written to shine. Maybe. Wasn't he in one of the Fast and Furious movies? Hmm.

[captainschlumpy.livejournal.com]

RAIN!!!!!

I approve of this review and add only one minor correction and an addition
Awesomely bad. and not enough scenes with wet, topless RAIN!!!

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

You'd have only been satisfied with shirtless wet Rain throughout the movie, I'm sure. :)

[atraxia.livejournal.com]

what does MST3K stand for? i see it everywhere and i have no clue.

[sometimesdee.livejournal.com]

Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a show in the 90's that made fun of really bad movies.

How young are you, whippersnapper?

[aearonlinn.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Okay, so save it for when they do the RiffTrax! Will do, thanks for saving me the pain. (Though yeah. Shirtless Rain. That's worth it-- so long as I have Mike Nelson commentating.)

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

I cannot wait for the RiffTrax of this bomb. ::rubs hands together gleefully::

[anogete.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't think it would be good, but I didn't know it would be *this* bad.

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

Dude. DUDE. Yeah, it's bad.
Rent it on video and invite friends over for a night of revelry and hijinks.

[stormbringer986.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure they should have scrubbed out any attempt at plot, renamed the movie "Gratuitous Violence With A Random Shirtless Hot Guy", and maybe cut off an hour of the run time. Maybe then it would have been somewhat bearable. Or not.

Rain was pretty hot. But the movie was freaking atrocious. All I could think when it got to the end credits was "FINALLY! I've been dying for this thing to end for the past hour and 20 minutes."

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure they should have scrubbed out any attempt at plot, renamed the movie "Gratuitous Violence With A Random Shirtless Hot Guy", and maybe cut off an hour of the run time. Maybe then it would have been somewhat bearable. Or not.
Every time they cut to the stupid female agent and her weird ninja fetish/obsession in an attempt to flesh out the "plot" I rolled my eyes. And all the flashbacks with the child torture! My God, I keep saying "this is a Child Protective Services public service announcement waiting to happen." I really wanted to walk up to the screen and say "Shh!, baby; don't talk, just kill people with neat CGI effects." It wasn't cooperating.

And the first five minutes had potential! Not much, but still. I looked at my watch a lot during that movie.