Ninja Assasin (2009)
Ok, so I've been wanting to see this for a LONG time. Super assassin (do I have a theme tonight? If so, it was by accident) ... ninja style. Trailers and teasers were good, could the flick live up to the hype? Almost yes, but a lot of no. First I'll start with props to 'Rain', the actor who plays our hero ninja. Beyond that, fuck all the acting, it sucked...bad. Except for maybe the guy who played his 'father'. The entirety of the film fluctuated between flashbacks of his growing up in this remote mountain ninja training camp for orphans and the experiences that built up his character, in contrast with a current international police detective 'stumbling' upon a 'ninja-assassin for hire' arrangement employed by govt's around the world. For those of us that love kung fu flicks, the flashbacks were decent. The rest of the film focusing on some American chick working for Europol (yeah, right?) and was filmed in Germany with a mish mash of bad actors, poor dialogue, and shit story. Essentially, I think they had to pay some people to say some gibberish in hopes of pasting together all their fight scenes. They should have just presented the fight scenes...that's what we came for, and the rest was slow and really annoying.
Now, to the good part, the fight scenes. Seems someone discovered how to do the latest blood splatter effect, so we used it in every fight scene, on every hit (kill or wound), from beginning to end. It was kinda cool the first 30 times, but then you get to the second or third fight and it's kinda :so-what: 8) The other special effects investment was remapping the Matrix bullet effect into flying ninja stars. That was also over used to the point where it was cool for the first 500 or so, but then...well, then it was still kinda cool, even if it was played out.
Bottom line, we (I) came for the fight scenes. Those were decent, but overkilled (pun intended) with the special effects. The rest of the scenes were a waste of time. I do not recommend this, on any count.