text: 'Assassin' delivers what's to be expected – The North Wind
  'Assassin' delivers what's to be expected
  Sometimes a movie title can sum up an entire film with just a couple words, such as "Fight Club." The first time I saw that particular title I figured that people will be joining a club of some sort and fighting, and I wasn't completely wrong. The first time I saw the name "Ninja Assassin" my initial thought was a ninja is probably going to kill a lot of people, and that is exactly what happened.
  "Ninja" follows Raizo (Rain) who is kidnapped as a child and raised to be a lethal ninja that has advanced healing powers and can move faster than ordinary people. During his extreme training, Raizo becomes one of the top students. But after his first assassination of a political leader, he is forced to kill one of his fellow students that tried to escape their school. Raizo is unable to do it. His clan then betrays him, and he is left for dead. Years later, an investigator named Mika finds out too much about the ninja clan, and tracks down Raizo who has been training his whole life in order to kill the people that he used to call family. Raizo helps keep the detective alive while she attempts to uncover enough information on the ninja clan to take them down before more people are killed.
  This movie suffers from one of the worst scripts I have heard in a long time, but with a title like "Ninja Assassin," I was not surprised. The lead actor's name is Rain, and his lines are limited to "I will kill you," or "Look out," but I think any more would have made this film worse. I do give him some credit because he really is a badass who kills a lot of people. Naomie Harris's character could have been played by Julia Roberts, and it still would not have made her role worthwhile. Her character was just bad, and unfortunately you see way too much of her. The rest of the cast is nothing more than filler and sheep to the slaughter for the main character.
  The plot is nothing special, but the writers' take on ninjas being complete killing machines is entertaining. The parts when they went into Raizo's past were much more interesting than the actual drama in this movie, but none of it is what I would consider good. The entire movie was based around the extremely violent fight scenes, but that's what the movie's purpose obviously was.
  Director James McTeigue has not made many movies in the past, but he did direct "V for Vendetta," and was involved with every "Matrix" film. You can tell he knows how to film very intense fight scenes, but the end result seemed a bit rushed. The story itself was like a cheap version of a detective show on cable, and while the fight scenes were definitely cool, some of them were filmed so darkly you couldn't see any of the action.
  The score by Ilan Eshkeri was well done, but it is nothing that hasn't been done before. The music did not overshadow the awesome sound effects, which is good because this movie is a great example of why even bad action films like "Rambo 3" can get recognized for having great sound. The team behind the special effects did a good job in some of the fight scenes, especially with some outrageous decapitation scenes, but the computer generated blood was a little too fake for me.
  Overall, this is a guy movie in every single way, but unfortunately the film has a couple boring parts that really bring the film down. When the movies action does pick up it really is entertaining, and some of the gorier kill scenes are epic. If your girlfriend dragged you to see "New Moon" at midnight, then this may be the perfect payback. To others, you will get what you expect from a movie called "Ninja Assassin."