Ninja


2.5/4

Starring: Scott Adkins, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Mika Hijii, Togo Igawa

Rated R for Violence

"Ninja" is a good direct-to-DVD movie.  Based on its pedigree, you won't hear any screams of outrage over its not being considered for any Oscars.  The acting is adequate, the script is lousy, and the plot is infantile (it mixes movies like "Ninja Assassin," "Brotherhood of the Wolf," and, believe it or not, "Memoirs of a Geisha.").  But for 90 minutes of dumb fun, it ain't bad.

Casey (Scott Adkins) is an orphan who was raised in a ninja dojo, and along with a few others, he's been tasked to take a sacred chest of ninja weapons and armor to New York City for safekeeping.  But a former fellow ninja, Masazuka (Tsuyoshi Ihara), wants revenge, and will do anything to get it back.

Like I said…this isn't a high concept movie.  But believe it or not, there are times when we're not looking for a film by Ingmar Bergman or Eric Rohmer, and this fits the bill.

The acting is adequate.  Scott Adkins is sufficiently ripped (which is really all that the role requires), but it helps that he can recite dialogue better than say, Lorenzo Lamas.  Mika Hijii is annoying as the whiny Namiko (the obligatory estrogen injection for the females force to watch this testosterone overdose with their WWF-loving boyfriends), and I kept hoping that she'd get hit by a train.  Tsuyoshi Ihara is okay as the villain, but I wouldn't be in a rush to hire him again.

The action scenes are pretty cool…and for once, you can watch them without having a seizure (we can thank Paul Greengrass for starting that trend…asshole!). There are some issues with these scenes, though.  I'll buy the jumping onto moving cars, and the walking up lightposts…that sort of thing is expected in a movie like this.  But you'll never get me to believe that there is EVER an empty block near a subway station in downtown New York City.

There are other problems as well.  The script is terrible.  There are no characters in this film, only actors speaking dialogue that is so bland it may as well have been a dubbed version.  What is spoken is only meant to move the plot along.  Not that we'd expect a cast like this to do any real acting…

Is this a bad movie?  Not really.  It's not particularly good (it could be described as a "guilty pleasure"), but I've seen mainstream releases that are worse.  In short, it's a great movie to watch when you're wasted.

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