I'm sure we all remember those formative years of our childhood when we dreamt of being actors, astronauts, doctors or rather unusually in my case a Ninja. That's right people between the ages of around ten and fourteen I wanted to be a fucking Ninja. Actually fuck it I still do. I put this down to an old babysitter who got me into Kung Fu films and the time we sat up and watched a fuzzy VHS copy of Enter The Ninja starring Ninja legend Sho Kosugi. The year was 1981 and since then I've had a bit of an obsession with the shadowy assassins. I can't lie I was really looking forward to Ninja Assassin and the fact it's directed by James McTeigue who gave us the excellent if slightly flawed V For Vendetta added to that. Fucking Ninjas on the big screen! What could go wrong? Well fucking everything actually.

Ninja Assassin starts great as a group of Yakuza are hanging out getting tattooed, doing drugs etc when a message arrives. Upon opening it black sand pours forthwith and an old guy with them freaks out and tells them a tale of a shadowy figure who slaughtered a room of people he was in many years before. When they discover he means a Ninja much laughter ensues, right up until the point one of them gets his face sliced off. Fucking rock on I thought. This is exactly what I wanted to see. They are all killed quickly and violently and at this point I thought I might be in for a treat, then right away something happens as the action switches to Berlin and an Interpol investigation into a number of assassinations over the years. Japanese pop star plays rogue Ninja Raizo and his backstory is told in flashbacks throughout. As Interpol draw close to these mysterious shadow clans there is much excuse for loads of action sequences and this is my main problem with the film.

If you watch Eastern Kung Fu cinema you can only be awestruck by their capabilities at martial arts and despite low budgets the chorography is often stunning. In Ninja Assassin after that great opening scene it seems the camera crew were replaced by Michael bays as we go all shaky cam. With a bucket load of CGI blood thrown in and the fact Ninjas prefer to fight in the dark I struggled to see what the fuck was going on half the time. Rain is pretty good as the Ninja fighting for his Ninja rights but bad dialogue and that fucking epileptic camera crew let the whole fucking thing down.

Maybe I'm being too cynical and there's certainly plenty in it to satisfy the modern cinema goer but as a fan of the Martial Arts genre I was just fucking disappointed. McTeigue gave us some great fight sequences in V and as the producers were the Warchowskis I'd have thought it may have played a bit fucking better but it's just fucking headache inducing. I'm now off to watch Police Assassins and Dragon Tiger Gate to remind myself how it should be done. Don't fucking waste your money on this over stylised piece of shite.

Couldn't Kick A Baby Ninjas Arse out of 5