REVIEW: ‘Ninja’ (2009)

Talented British martial arts star Scott Adkins (X-MEN ORIGINS; WOLVERINE) is an American ninja who goes up against a dangerous cult and rival ninja-turned-mercenary in New York to protect valuable ninja armor and weapons. NINJA is a modestly entertaining, B-grade actioner from action director Isaac Florentine (UNDISPUTED 2) that benefits from quality fight choreography from Akihiro Noguchi (BLACK BELT), excellent fighting from Adkins and a measure of bloody and stylized, urban ninja violence akin to the high-tech, ballistic Snakes Eyes-versus-Storm Shadow action in G.I. JOE. Working against these strengths is an ill-paced and ponderously bland plot, uniformly bad acting devoid of any charisma, overly ambitious production design noticeably limited by budget, and too little bloody and stylized ninja violence.

Casey (Adkins) is an American orphan raised and mentored by a ninja master in Japan. After a rival ninja named Masazuka (Tsuyoshi Ihara) is expelled from the ninjitsu school for trying to kill Casey out of jealousy, he becomes an assassin-for-hire and threatens to steal the school’s Yoroi Bitsu, a chest containing the weapons and armor of the last Koga ninja. As a result, Casey is charged with escorting the chest to a scholar in New York for safekeeping. Once in New York, Casey and three other students are attacked by a cult whose members dress in matching outfits like a street gang right out of THE WARRIORS. Casey and his girlfriend Namiko (Mika Hijii) escape only to be hunted by cult members and the police. Masazuka eventually kidnaps Namiko to exchange her for the Yoroi Bitsu. In response, Casey equips the weapons and armor in the Yoroi Bitsu to battle Masazuka, ninja to ninja. Thus, like Sho Kosugi in REVENGE OF THE NINJA, Adkins spends the majority of the film fighting in street clothes while the lead villain gets to have all the fun.

It is unfortunate that NINJA has come out (overseas) in the same year as NINJA ASSASSIN as comparisons are unavoidable. When stacked side-by-side, NINJA is the lesser of the two although not by a large measure.

The budget for NINJA is a fraction of NINJA ASSASSIN and it doesn’t have the backing of the Wachowski brothers or the presence of a veteran like Sho Kosugi. Yet the film attempts to create the illusion of being a globe-trotting actioner on a larger budget. It’s actually pulled off fairly well for the most part until it becomes apparent that a significant portion of the film ends up being shot in and around the same artificial or doctored urban street that stands in for New York but is presumably in Bulgaria.

Unfortunately, general set design is lacking consistency in theme. At times, sets look realistic and at other times they look hyper-realistic, like something out of BATMAN BEGINS or even SIN CITY, only with less detail. This uneasy balance between realism and stylized design persists through other areas of the film, especially costuming.

In terms of look and feel, the film plays out like three separate movies sandwiched together. The first part is set in the Japanese dojo setting and looks perhaps the most authentic. Here, Florentine has gathered some genuine Japanese martial arts masters in appropriate attire and setting for what would be expected of a modern ninjitsu school. For this portion, Florentine drew on his real-world association with the Japanese karate world and it shows. It’s far different from the fanciful, closed door and cold-blooded secret society approach of the ninja clan depicted in NINJA ASSASSIN.

The second part is the flight of Casey and Namiko through New York City that reaches a highpoint during an excellent skirmish on a subway train. This part has the feel of a Jason Bourne film without the shaky cam. This eventually transitions into a TERMINATOR situation as Masazuka assaults a police station where Casey and Namiko are being held. This scene is the closest the film gets to replicating the large-scale action in NINJA ASSASSIN but its not even close to being in the same league, nor of capturing the same level of excitement regardless of budget constraints.

The third and final chapter in the film takes on a Japanese superhero tone in look and feel as Masazuka glides off a rooftop with Namiko and Casey goes after the cult and eventually Masazuka. Casey’s assault on the cult’s stagy-looking lair is reminiscent of similarly staged one-versus-many fights in THE PROTECTOR and CHOCOLATE. That is to say the combat looks good but the environment it takes place in is looks like something left over from an old DOCTOR WHO episode. Had the film managed to stick with any one of these themes throughout I think the results would have been better.

Due to his training and experience, Adkins would normally dance circles around someone like Rain when it comes to screen fighting comparisons but several factors significantly narrow the gap onscreen. First, neither actor is sticking to classical ninjitsu forms. Instead they are leaning on techniques that play to their individual strengths. Rain has a background in pop dance and favors showy, circular movements. I’m guessing he probably also had at least twice the amount of time to train for and shoot his sequences as Adkins did. A big portion of a martial arts movie budget always goes into the fight sequences (training included), which can in some cases take weeks or months to shoot. Adkins, who came into NINJA with a well-rounded set of screen fighting skills to begin with, favors a mix of MMA-style locks, takedowns and throws mixed with his specialty which are aerial kicks and flips. Adkins and Florentine have been working on developing his dynamic fighting presentation since SPECIAL FORCES in 2003 and Adkins’ performance in NINJA looks like more of the same, which is great by general martial arts movie standards but a little disappointing by ninja movie standards. It’s the equivalent of casting Chuck Norris as a ninja and letting him just do a bunch of roundhouse kicks.

Where the violence in NINJA ASSASSIN bashes its audience over the head relentlessly with gore and bloodletting, NINJA is more selective in its use of the human body as a tatami cutting mat. Both films use CGI to produce blood effects and, surprisingly, they both look about the same, which is to say neither looks as convincing as high-quality, conventional special effects do. There is virtually no gore in NINJA but a few kills look pretty painful, particularly a spike that enters the top of a victim’s head and exits through their lower jaw. Another guy gets sliced down the front and another has his hand chopped off. Standard stuff for a ninja flick made worse by unreal digital effects work.

Ninjas in Florentine’s film are less shadowy and cryptic than in NINJA ASSASSIN. They’re not superhuman and tend to adapt to the modern world. Masazuka makes use of guns, night-vision goggles and a wing suit, in addition to his use of traditional ninja weapons. This is more plausible than the machine gun spray of shuriken and super speed on display in NINJA ASSASSIN but ultimately less fun because the film doesn’t reach for similar extremes. If you look back at the history of ninja flicks, extremes actually define the sub-genre. Aside from the few semi-realistic Japanese chambara films of the 1960s, ninja movies are all about excess from WATARI NINJA BOY (1966) to DUEL TO THE DEATH (1983) and beyond. The more carnage and insane action there is the better.

NINJA is not a bad action film. It’s actually quite good as a low-budget production, if somewhat rough around the edges. In some ways, the film looks better than any of Florentine’s previous movies. I love the more authentic Japanese martial arts displays at the beginning of the film and the high-tech ninja gadgets are cool, especially Masazuka’s night-vision goggles. The action scenes are expertly choreographed. They’re shot, edited and lit better than a lot of the scenes in NINJA ASSASSIN. They’re also far more sophisticated than the ninja action produced by ’80s-era companies like Cannon Films and IFD Films and Arts. There is still too much dependence on trendy speed-altering camera shots. As for Scott Adkins, he proves once again that he is one of the best screen fighters of this generation, although I hope he can muster more screen presence going forward than he displayed in this film. Even Rain had more character as a ninja hero and that’s not saying much.