Ninja (2009)

This movie is by no means an excellent film. This film is a throw back to 80's action flicks with an emphasis on martial arts and the Ninja subculture. The acting is not very good but the action set pieces are excellent! This movie showcases Scott Adkins amazing martial art skills and stunt work. Anyone who grew up watching 80's action movies and ninja movies will enjoy this film. The sequel to Ninja is on par with this movie and I'm always surprised that Scott Adkins hasn't been tapped to do more mainstream movies. Overall I found this movie enjoyable and I hope they continue making sequels as long as Scott Adkins is the main hero/character.

Sigh, where to begin with this mess? American films about ninja are never good, but I thought that since Scott Adkins was in it, it was worth checking out.Unfortunately, the ludicrous beginning only set the scene for the badness to come, as clichés gave way to thoroughly inept acting and comic-esque villains who were infinitely more cheesy than intimidating.Honestly struggling not to turn it off after 10 minutes, I somehow lasted 30 until the pain got the better of me and I thought I owed it to myself, as a decent human being, to watch something else instead.Nut shell: if you want martial arts, action, suspense or even tolerable acting, check out something else.

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.

There is really nothing positive to say about this movie. I bought it on blu ray as part of a 5 for 20$ deal @ blockbuster. I would just sell it somewhere but i wouldn't want to subject anyone else to this nonsense. I have seen martial arts films w/a white guy as the lead that were not horrible (not many, but they are out there...Last Samurai for example) but this is not one of them. Not one actor was decent and not one scene was worth while. My wife and I were ESPECIALLY annoyed at the female lead who kept getting beat up. Seriously, save yourself 1.5 hours of your life and watch anything other than this junk. It isn't often (in fact, this is the first time) that I would give a movie 1 star but this truly deserves it!