Ninja Assassin (2009)
Directed by James McTeigue
Ninja Assassin follows Raizo, one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Taken from the streets as a child, he was transformed into a trained killer by the Ozunu Clan, a secret society whose very existence is considered a myth. But haunted by the merciless execution of his friend by the Clan, Raizo breaks free from them and vanishes. Now he waits, preparing to exact his revenge.
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What critics compared Ninja Assassin to
This week, director James McTeigue ( V for Vendetta ) aims to resurrect them with Ninja Assassin , a hyperkinetic gorefest starring Korean pop star Rain .
Actually, James McTiegue's ("V for Vendetta") sophomore effort, "Ninja Assassin" goes back even further than that, to the wave of kung fu-ploitation films that washed up on American shores in the 1970s.
That director James McTeigue has stepped down and taken a full-out tumble from his first film, 2006's provocative " V for Vendetta ," and screenwriters Matthew Sand (his debut) and J. Michael Straczynski (2008's " Changeling ") needn't have even bothered showing up.
One can't ask too much of a film called Ninja Assassin -- that's a given -- but James McTeigue's proper directorial follow-up to V for Vendetta does its damnedest to take that insta-pulp title and weave around it a worn-out tale of forbidden love, family betrayal, and government conspiracy.
Larry and Andy Wachowski (The Matrix) produced this soulless, hyperbolic actioner, again handing over the directing chores to James McTeigue (V for Vendetta).
Otherwise, “The Raven” is not offensively or ineptly constructed -- especially compared to “V for Vendetta” director James McTeigue ’s last mess of a movie, “Ninja Assassin” -- and will probably play just fine as late night cable TV filler or something to fall asleep watching on very long plane rides.
Director James McTeigue (Ninja Assassin and V For Vendetta) probably didn’t realize it, but The Raven — with its mixture of heated dialog, gothic gloom and anachronistic language — might have made a terrific comedy.
Cusack struggles to present the arrogant author as both a tortured genius and a credible investigator—thank you, writers, for avoiding a terrible joke about the Poe-lice—while director James McTeigue (“Ninja Assassin”) fares better with images of a head tilted slightly off the neck, rather than gruesome “Saw”-like torture devices.
This premise sounds promising, but the execution is dullsville; it sorely needed a gothic sensibility like Tim Burton's, but what it got was non-entity James McTeigue, who previously distinguished himself with V for Vendetta and Ninja Assassin.
Director James McTeigue ( V For Vendetta , Ninja Assassin ) mounts The Raven with visual splash and a rich production design that often looks overblown (especially during a Poe-derived killing splattered with CGI blood), but never cheap.
The director, whose previous works include V for Vendetta and Ninja Assassin (two films this writer enjoyed), handles the material far too stiffly and fails to add anything interesting into the mix other than the initial premise.
While John Wick marks their first directorial effort, the two make full use of their background as stunt/fight coordinators in films including The Expendables , Rambo and Ninja Assassin to stage intricate, but clean action scenes with long-takes instead of the rapid-edit format that has become the genre norm.