NINJA ASSASSIN (2009)
Posted by Stephen Jannise
Dir. James McTeigue
Cinemark Tinseltown 15 (Beaumont, TX), 11/29/09, 2:35pm
Don’t see this movie.
Allow me to explain just what it means for me to type that particular phrase. I’m generally against discouraging people from seeing any film simply because I myself didn’t like it. After all, by doing so I would be preventing someone from forming their own opinion about a film and participating in the dialogue surrounding that film, or worse, pointing someone away from a cinematic experience that might have some kind of life-altering effect on that person. But occasionally, I see a movie that inspires me to run out of the theater and immediately warn everyone I meet away from it. Ninja Assassin is one of these. This is a film that earns the harshest words a reviewer could possibly say about a movie: it doesn’t merit an opinion, and the only way it might change your life is to make you quite suddenly regret the advent of cinema. And that’s not what this blog is about.
If you think I’m against this movie just because I don’t appreciate gory, outrageously violent movies, you’d be wrong; in fact, I see one just about every week at the Alamo Drafthouse’s Terror Tuesday. The thing that keeps me coming back to see Terror Tuesday films is that, despite their usually minuscule budgets, frequently amateurish acting, and occasional badly framed shots, it is almost always clear that the filmmakers are excited about making interesting or unique films. None of that passion can be found in Ninja Assassin, and perhaps the only understandable decision made by this film is to cast the perfect avatar to represent this cold indifference, ex-boy-band-member Rain. I would call him South Korea’s Justin Timberlake, but I stopped insulting Justin Timberlake after “Dick in a B*x.”
I don't know about you, but I think we've found our ninja.
There are very few entertainers who are more ill-equipped for a lead role in a motion picture than Mr. Rain. Critics often deride many of our young actors for relying on the same two expressions, pointing out that Kristen Stewart always bites her lip and pulls her hair behind her ears, or that Orlando Bloom always has pained eyes and an upturned lip. Rain has two fewer expressions. Based on this performance, I would like to put forward the possibility that he may not even be a real human being, which also doesn’t bode well for James McTeigue’s future as a director of actors.
Indeed, I think we can safely say now that the sizeable cult audience enjoyed by McTeigue’s previous film V for Vendetta is due mostly to the source material and the natural talents of Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, and John Hurt. In this newer film, McTeigue has been challenged by a script that seems to have been written by a committee of 12-year-old boys who have just recently “done the Dew” and a lead actor who so recently was credited with the lyric “Trembling inside your shaking body is my magic stick.” I think this challenge proved too daunting for McTeigue’s minimal skills.
Perhaps he could learn a thing or two from his producers/mentors, the Wachowski Brothers. They also used Rain in their most recent film, the much more entertaining piece of cinematic absurdity Speed Racer. When faced with using Rain in their picture, the Wachowskis knew how to handle such a personality: cram him into a gaudy, vaguely defined, lifeless, computer-generated racecar and send him whirling around a gaudy, vaguely defined, lifeless, computer-generated racetrack. After all, Rain is definitely three out of four of those adjectives, and as I’ve already said, maybe all four. The first film he ever acted in was titled I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK. No, Rain, no it’s not okay.
Don’t see this movie.
