Ninja (2009)

Such a frustrating disappointment

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This movie really is bad. Now, I am by no means saying that since I don't like the movie you shouldn't. But, since I prefer that if someone doesn't like a movie they explain why, I am going to attempt to put into words just how bad this movie is.The story is predictable and boring. A Caucasian man, an orphan, grows up in a ninja clan in Japan and learns to be a ninja. He has a rival that is reckless and mean and doesn't follow the full teachings of the master so the white guy is chosen and the successor for the school and protector of the ancient ninja gear. There is also a girl that the hero falls in love with by the end of the movie after the obligatory climatic fight scene.In addition to the above there are so many things about the plot that just didn't make sense to me that I can't remember all of them. Here are a few. The bad guy is after an ancient set of ninja gear so they try to hide it in NY at a university. Not very secretive. I don't know why they just didn't put it in another part of the country (Japan). Russian mob guys are after the hero and the girl and shooting recklessly at them through the city. The camera then cuts to a mob guy and he says: "Remember we want them alive." Then they continue to shoot at them. While staying at the home of the professor that is helping them "hide" the ancient ninja gear, the Russian mob breaks in and kills everyone except the hero and the girl (of course). The police investigate and name them as suspects. The fingerprints on the guns are all mob guys so shouldn't the police name them as people of interest for questioning instead of naming them as the killers? And why did the hero and girl flee the the shootout and go to a hotel? Why not go straight to the police? The dialog is actually funny. I know that it was written to be serious but its so bad it made me laugh or roll my eyes.The fight scenes are so-so. Not very believable at all. The ancient ninja gear is so precious and valuable that the hero wears it for the final climatic fight scene. Of course it gets damaged so all that effort to protect it and all those lives lost was for nothing.Anyhow, don't waste your time with this movie.

Yesterday i saw NINJA.I am very impress to see this flick.Scott Adkins's performance is very good.Action sequences is also impressive.Story is just OK.This movie is much better than NINJA ASSASSIN in every term.Film location are good.Script are also good.Music is suit the film.The Most good thing in the movie is Scoot Adkins's action and performance.All the stunts seances are original.Plot of the story is also good.Train seances are very good and impressive. Makeup is good. Direction of the movie is very good.We can compare the movie with kill bill.The action sequences done without CGI technology.

As we are taught by this movie the Japanese ancient art of espionage, covert ops and murder has evolved and has now become a respectable martial arts focused on the spiritual perfection. As we all naturally know becoming a good person always involves learning the traits and usage of a multitude of deadly weapons, poisons and such. In one such respectable establishment (Dojo) the noble art of killing is taught by Sensei (Togo Igawa) and amongst his students are his daughter Namiko (Mika Hijii), the ultimate pupil Masazuka (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an American orphan Casey (Scott Adkins), and a lot of cannon fodder.Namiko is probably the strongest and most potent fighter of the three easily beating Casey in combat in the beginning of the movie. Unfortunately she also has a severe weakness: in various key life threatening situations she forgets she is a trained deadly martial artist and indulges into the age-old tradition of screaming her face off playing a helpless female victim (albeit maybe this is a sinister ninjutsu ploy to distract the opponent and to make enemies ignore Namiko?).Masazuka is set to take over the dojo from Sensei, but envious of the attention Casey receives from the ninja master, he loses himself during a training combat and attempts to kill the hapless American. This ends in Masazuka being expelled from the institution, as killing is not accepted in the ninjutsu code of murder. Or something like that.Naturally Masazuka turns bad and becomes a prominent assassin for hire. One of his best clients - the Temple Corporation, who has a secretive para-fascist organisation, which loves shooting people in broad daylight. However still stricken with regret and full of spite he decides to take over by force the legacy of Sensei's ninjutsu, Yoroi Bitsu, an armoured chest that contains the weapons of the last Koga Ninja.Fighting ensues, carpets of blood and bodies populate the streets of the movie and the good guys fight the bad guys...The plot is totally nonsensical. Extravagantly nonsensical. But unlike the very enjoyable "Ninja Assassin" it fails to take a tongue and cheek approach and just feeds us a bad movie with a bad plot with some exceptionally terrible acting... all of these flaws are supposedly supposed to be glossed over by the impressive fight sequences and good tech credits of the movie. Alas... in this time and age my expectations are not so low as that.Despite some terrible acting (fronted by Scott Adkins and Mika Hijii) which reminded me of a Nigerian nollywood movie I watched a couple of days ago I must however commend a very convincing Tsuyoshi Ihara, who does a great job as the main protagonist.

This really is a below average ninja movie, from the dialogue to the acting to the action, almost everything is just way too cheesy and lame. In fact it's sort of like watching a slightly more violent version of Power Rangers. The movie has some similarities of "Ninja Assassin", the ninja clan is sort of similar, so is the rivalry and the love interest aspect of it. But unlike "Ninja Assassin" where the ninja that goes rogue is the hero, in this one the ninja that goes rogue is the main villain and the ninja clan are the good guys. The beginning scene made this movie seem like it has potential, but as soon as it bring some cult and cult leader in the whole movie went to trash. Almost nothing about this movie made any sense and there is just way too many noticeable plot holes. The main reason I decided to watch this was because I enjoyed "Undisputed 2 and 3" and was entertained by Scott Adkins performance, mainly fighting choreography in those movies. But in this one the fighting choreography is just...eh. This isn't a terrible ninja movie, but there is a lot of flaws and the script is just laughable at times. None of the characters are even remotely interesting and didn't even seem like ninjas but cheap imitations of them. They don't even really fight like ninjas either, so for a ninja movie this is barely passable.4.3/10