Review: Ninja

Casey (Scott Adkins) is an American orphan taken in by sensei Togo Igawa and raised in his dojo. He’s resented by fellow pupil Masazuka (Tsuyoshi Ihara) who sees himself as the rightful heir of their sensei. Jealous and embittered, Masazuka breaks their sacred code by violently lashing out at Casey and is cast out from the dojo altogether. He becomes a ninja, an evil assassin, and attempts to steal a prized artefact; the Yoroi Bitsu, armour and weapons of the last great ninja. In order to prevent Masazuka from ever obtaining the Yoroi Bitsu, Adkins and the sensei’s daughter (the awfully cute Mika Hijii) are sent to America. Naturally, Masazuka ends up finding their location anyway and sets after them. Throw in some investigating cops and a weirdo cult (who aid Masazuka in his evil deeds for some reason), and you’ve got yourself a movie.

I keep waiting for that big breakout film for British-born martial arts arse-kicker Scott Adkins, after having been impressed by him in the watchable Van Damme movie “The Shepherd”, where he had a supporting role as a henchman. This 2009 actioner gives Adkins a lead role alright, but it is not nearly a good enough film to truly put him on the map, nor did it. I also keep waiting for someone to make a truly great movie about ninja, and believe that someday, someone is going to do so. “Ninja”, directed by Isaac Florentine (director of “The Shepherd” and Adkins’ excellent “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing”), is not that movie, either. In fact, it doesn’t even get the most basic requirement of any ninja movie right: There aren’t very many ninja in it. In fact, the only ninja here is the lead villain, to the point where “Samurai” would be a more accurate title for the film. I know ninja are assassins, but if you’re calling a movie “Ninja”, either have your lead character be a ninja, or at least feature the villains a lot more prominently than we get here. In this, though, Adkins only dresses in ninja garb for the final showdown (but even then, only briefly) and he and the lead villain are the only ones in the film who look and act like ninja at all. Say what you will about the ninja films from The Cannon Group (“Enter the Ninja”, “Revenge of the Ninja”, and the “American Ninja” series), but at least they gave you freaking ninja by the bucket load.

I really shouldn’t have expected much here given it’s from Nu Image and Nu Image (founded by Avi Lerner) are an even worse company than Cannon (Hey, some of those “American Ninja” movies were fun and “Revenge of the Ninja” was terrific on its B-level). Nu Image are the company that churn out most of Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s more recent output, mostly direct-to-DVD (rumour has it Seagal turned down a role in “The Expendables” because Avi Lerner was a producer and he has bad blood with the guy). Some have been enjoyable in a schlocky way (Van Damme’s films, mostly), but most haven’t. The comparison between Cannon and Nu Image is made even more interesting when you realise Nu Image Founder and Co-Chairman Lerner served as producer on many of Cannon’s films (He’s Israeli, just like Cannon founders Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus). Did I mention that the screenplay for “Ninja” was co-written by one Boaz Davidson who wrote and directed one of Cannon’s best films, the uncommonly terrific teen sex comedy/drama “The Last American Virgin”? Well he did, and more recently has produced just about every direct-to-video creature flick of the last 10 years, and even the solid Van Damme outing “Until Death”. I bring all this up not only to show the hit-and-miss nature of all of these peoples’ work, but also because Avi Lerner was actually a producer on “American Ninja 2: The Confrontation” (which was quite good) and “American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt”, so he really ought to know what a fun ninja movie should be like. This movie isn’t much fun. Hmm, maybe it’s time for Japanese filmmakers to start making some ninja movies. I mean, there’s been plenty of samurai films, but I can’t recall too many ninja movies made by Japanese filmmakers off-hand.

We get off to a rather inauspicious start with a narration by someone who sadly isn’t very good with the English language. It’s never a good idea to have someone narrate in English when they are not an articulate speaker of the language. Worse still, the film hops from location and time way too often in just the first ten to fifteen minutes. I mean, why are there ninja in Russia? By the 20 minute mark we’ve gone from Japan to Russia to New York, which is at least one location too many in my book. Then a short while later we go to Tokyo and back to New York some ten seconds later. What the hell? Basically, the narrative is appallingly clunky, and both screenwriters and editor should be taken out and shot for their cock-up here. Also, for a Ninja film, there sure are a lot of squibs (or at least CGI blood) going off in the film. The film has too many guns and not nearly enough Ninja.

Adkins is fine here (as is his American accent), and certainly he is an impressive physical performer. Best of all, guns don’t even stop this guy ‘coz he’ll just kick ‘em out of your hand or make you whack yourself in the head with them. Steven Seagal’s about the only other martial arts actor I can recall who uses such tactics. Is he a good actor? Not really, but he’s good enough to carry his own action movie, so long as it’s a better one than this. He can’t do much with this one, I’m afraid. Togo Igawa, as Adkins’ sensei, has a definite Toshiro Mifune presence about him, whilst Tsuyoshi Ihara, as Adkins’ rival, isn’t bad either, especially on those occasions where he is not required to speak English.

The film has its moments, including a glorious bit where a guy gets split in half, followed by a cool disembowelling. The train fight is pretty damn fun to watch, even when it’s in slow-mo. There’s also an incredible arm-slicing scene that would make The Black Knight proud. Even better, this film shows that it is indeed impossible for a hero to beat up more than one person at a time by throwing one guy into a couple of others (instead of the standard idea of baddies stupidly waiting their turn to be knocked down one by one). The rainy/foggy cinematography by Ross W. Clarkson (the almost decent Nu Image actioner “Direct Contact”, with Dolph Lundgren) is really outstanding, even with the blue filters it looks gorgeous. Mr. Florentine’s slick stylistic flourishes, whilst self-indulgent, are certainly cool. I’m not a fan of fancy-arse stylistics, but Mr. Florentine sure does some terrific stuff here.

Scott Adkins ought to be a bigger deal and there ought to be more ninja films out there, but this film isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of either. Screenplay by Boaz Davidson and Michael Hurst (who had previously wrote the underwhelming “Hardwired”, with Val Kilmer and Cuba Gooding Jr), this just isn’t very good.

Rating: C