A Good Action Film, but…
Ninja stars up and coming action star Scott Adkins. Scott played Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was in Bourne Ultimatum back in 2007, and will star in Undisputed III: The Redemption later this year. In Ninja, Scott plays the role of Casey, a talented young martial artist who has been living in a Japanese dojo since he was brought there when he was just a child. He’s trained hard, and has a strong skill set and a good head on his shoulders. This is the source of some jealousy from another student who has been at the dojo most of his life: Masazuka, who is played by Tsuyoshi Ihara. Either Masazuka or Casey are destined to be the dojo’s next Soke (or Sensei). Whoever the current Soke deems to be his successor will also be tasked with protecting an ancient chest known as the Yoroi Bitsu that contains the weapons of the dojo’s last Koga Ninja.
Masazuka erupts one day during a practice fight between he and Casey and tries to kill him. Masazuka is immediately banned from the dojo that he’s known all his life. This causes him much anguish, but he finds some comfort in being a deadly assassin for hire in the United States. When he returns sometime later to Japan and poses a serious threat to the safety of the Yoroi Bitsu, the Soke asks his daughter Namiko and Casey to take it to a professor in the states for safe keeping.
Not surprisingly, Casey and Namiko are romantically involved, but I appreciated that the film didn’t burn time with any unnecessary romantic scenes, instead focusing on the action, which is what Ninja is all about. As you can predict from here, Masazuka intends to stop at nothing to obtain the contents of the Yoroi Bitsu, and it’s up to Casey to stop him and keep Namiko alive in the process. The story chugs along with some missteps and primarily serves to make sense of the action scenes, but I’ve witnessed far worse action stories. The fight scenes in Ninja on the other hand are very good, although a little too acrobatic. Casey’s fighting techniques primarily involve a lot of ‘all or nothing’ kicks, many of which he ends up on the floor after executing anyway. Still, the fight scenes are nicely choreographed and very fluid.
Overall, Ninja is a good fit for the 80s/90s action film genre that I’m very fond of. I wouldn’t put it amongst the best of that bunch, but for a modern day action movie, most of which tend to disappoint, Ninja does pretty well for itself.
Ninja on Blu-ray
I was impressed with the image and sound quality of Ninja on Blu-ray. Expect a very clean, crisp image with vibrant colors and a 5.1 Dolby True HD track that’s well mixed. So from a technical standpoint, this is a good looking and sounding film, but in terms of art direction, several scenes disappointed. Take for example Masazuka’s night vision optics on his futuristic ninja suit — when the camera shows his view through these, it’s pretty silly. Masazuka’s view is like tunnel vision, and the overlaid graphics don’t look realistic. The same goes for the cordless phone scene at the dojo — the display on the phone as it’s ringing looks really fake. Furthermore, the blood in Ninja looks very fake and CG, and it spews out like an anime, which I just didn’t think fit. The sound effect of when sword cut flesh was stock and out of place, too. There’s also a ton of glass that gets destroyed in this movie, which is one of its many cliches.
The back of the box lists several special features: 1080P High Definition Blu-ray Disc, 5.1 Dolby True HD, English SDH & Spanish Subtitles, and Previews. Clearly, none of those are actual extra features, so Ninja doesn’t have any at all. The Previews included are in SD and include trailers for Nicholas Cage’s new cop film set in New Orleans, Triangle (a horror film), and some useless Suicide Girls video.
With that, lets get to the summary…
