Ninja Assassin is a follow up film for James McTeigue to the superb V for Vendetta and he has successfully burned the majority of his street cred with this awful mess.
Based around a rouge assassin from a secret society of ninja clans we get a two pronged tale that eventually runs into each other. One follows the fore mentioned assassin, Raizo, who is avoiding multiple threats on his life and the other is an investigation by a young female agent, Mika, at Europol that is uncovering the alleged ninja assassin clan. All of this is inter cut with flashbacks to Raizo’s past and upbringing through the clan system and these are without a doubt the most interesting aspects of the film; probably because we can actually see what is happening, more on that later though.
The ninja clan would take young children and orphans and train them to become ninjas that were farmed out for political killings and so forth. Raizo was always special and watching him train and form a connection with a young girl is about the only compelling thing that happens in the film and in fact works quite well for the most part. The brutal treatment and unflinching nature of some of the image with children is not something we usually see in most pictures and while a tad brutal still felt fresh. Sadly the rest of the film doesn’t live up to these portions of the film, which weren’t anything incredible to write home about on their own accord.

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