A Playful Misconception, A Childhood's Dream

From the first three minutes I already had a bad feeling about the movie. From the way it was shot to the dialogue and the acting, nothing assured me that I hadn’t made a bad decision going in. But at that point, I was still thinking I was watching Ninja Assassin. It wasn’t until half an hour in before I realised this wasn’t what I signed up for.

Director Isaac Florentine didn’t seem to know what he was doing. He had no direction whether to keep the movie an action movie or to be more of a story driven one. But it was probably because he was bad at both. The action for a movie about ninja was tasteless. It was more like street fighting.

The story was pathetic to begin with, there was no pacing at all, the plot was senseless and trite, and the over-acting certainly made it worse. And the way the director showed off his protagonist, I wouldn’t be surprised if the director was the actor. But they are not the same person, so that was really weird.

As for the female lead, she was supposed to be the daughter of the ninja master, who lived and trained with her father since she was born; and yet she cannot fight to save her life. She was supposed to be one of the best fighters, or so we were led to believe in the first five minutes of the opening scene.

What the movie had in abundance was blood. Blood spewed and sprayed and splattered unconvincingly and unbelievably. It was as if Florentine was trying to emulate Quentin Tarantino but failing miserably.

Why did Brunei bring this movie in anyway? There are so many other fantastic movies out there, who thought it would be a good idea to show this? I hope it was because they made the same mistake as I did.

Worst movie I’ve seen this year. One of the worst movies I have ever seen actually.

Rating: 2 / 10