The Plot. The story tells about a young ninja, Raizo, who is an orphan raised by the Ozunu ninja clan, but ends up turning on his clan at one point. He is then hunted by his clan, while he tries to come up with a way to gain access to and kill the head of the Ozunu clan. The main story arc is about a young ambitious Europol investigator Mika who discoveres that ninjas still exist and operate in the modern world and are linked to many high-grade assassinations. While Mika is about to be executed by a ninja, Raizo steps in and rescues Mika in order to use her to get to Ozunu.
General thoughts. Well, it was about time they made a proper ninja movie. This wasn't much anything above an average Hollywood action flick, but it it is quite a nice ninja movie. A lot of special ninja equipment, a lot of ninja tricks and a LOT of blood.
I think the amount of gore deserves a special mention. At one point the protagonist kills a man, but doesn't succeed to do so right away and ends up stabbing the poor bastard a lot of times, every time producing a bucket of blood. He ends up covered in the stuff. While really nice and atmospheric, the amount of blood just makes this movie a tad silly.
Since this movie was built on action rather than the plot, the effects are usually quite nice. There are a lot of slow-motion shots to show off all sorts of extreme martial art stunts. And to balance it all out, there was a whole lot of ninja philosophy involved, with lifestyle tips and everything.
The story, while pretty standard, was nice. It had a romantic arc to show the morally nicer point of view to being a ninja. Nothing unexpected there - boy falls in love with girl, girl is killed, boy wants revenge. But I did mention that this is a pretty standard plot when it comes to Hollywood action flicks.
The part that bothered me was that while being all Japanese with their gang of merry nin, they didn't mutter but a few Japanese words during the whole movie. A little bit disappointed there.
Also, chilling on a nail-pillow isn't ninja, it's just basic weight distribution, where your body weight distributes equally, not leaving a whole lot of weight for any single nail.
I would recommend this one to any ninja fans out there. For anybody else this would just seem like a waste of time. This is a nice action flick with a lot of martial arts and ninja tricks, but not much of a masterpiece when it comes to cinematography or writing. They even used hand-signs for some brief moments. A lot of shurikens flying around, try not to get hit.
6/10 Flogs
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