I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the man behind the twisted-ass Ichi The Killer fuckin’ kills it. But this? This was a total massacre…
Vile, violent villainy. A suicide mission. Impossible odds. Intricate plans. Team building. Explosives experts. Training montages. Samurai warriors. 13 Assassins. Against 200. In a near hour-long action sequence that’s intensity, violence and sheer bad-assery will have you simultaneously inching closer to the TV in slack-jawed awe and recoiling away in horror. They turn a town into a weapon, for fucksakes! Two thirds Kurosawa-homage, one third kill-stab boner-stravaganza. Mix it up and director Takashi Miike’s (molotov) cocktail will fuck you (and pretty much every character in the movie) UP! Death before dishonour, dinks!
I was a die-harder-than-Bruce Willis fan of violent Asian Cinema, from Seven Samurai to everything Bruce Lee to Ong Bak to Hard Boiled and The Killer. Chow Yun Fuckyeah! In the last few years though, I lost interest. The new shit wasn’t so new. It all seemed either retread or try-hard or not hard enough. Somehow all three of those apply to Ninja Assassin. I mean it was entertaining-ish at the time, but sort of underwhelming too. It starred a guy named Rain, though. But then it also had super-wack CG blood. Rain: countered. Ninja Assassin: ass-out. Come on, suits! You generally get samurais sorted out properly, so why the major malfunction with cinema + ninjas? Don’t these mooks know that ninjas are THE REAL ULTIMATE POWER?! Sigh…
In my opinion, you can’t fuck with ninjas, but the film world begs to differ. Between Rain & The CG Blood Factory and the severe fuckery that took place in that steaming shitheap GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, I don’t have a lot of faith. The director, Stephen Sommers, took the two coolest characters that property has and left his skidmarks all over them. “Hey, I know. Let’s give the mute Snake Eyes a mouth and leave white ninja Storm Shadow without his fucking NINJA mask so he can step up in this motherfucker just-a swingin his hair. Tatum!” Gah! These days I basically just cling to the rad ninja-shit in Batman Begins. And wish I still had Ninja Gaiden or Shinobi (or, remember this shit?: Tenchu Assassin. Roof-sneak murder-shit, sons!) Or flip through old TMNT comics. (I’m eagerly anticipating Infinite Kung-Fu. Fuckin’ martial arts and funk and zombies and shit? MINE!)
I suppose Storm Shadow did actually deliver me one positive, but it wasn’t till his stint with Cobra was long over and much cussed out, with his next role…
I saw I Saw The Devil. I have a strong stomach, so believe me when I say: It’s. Fucking. Savage. The dude that played Storm Shadow gives an angry, visceral raw nerve performance as a man hunting the batshit-crazy serial killer (played by Oldboy) that killed his pregnant fiancé. Rest assured you will wince and shudder frequently. Between fist pumps. I’d compare it to the end of Inglorious Basterds when [SPOILER WARNING: HIGHLIGHT THE BLANK AREA TO SEE THE TEXT] Tarantino gives us an uncomfortably long and intense look at Eli Roth shooting the ever-loving shit out of Hitler’s face [END SPOILER WARNING] in that it’s satisfying on a deep, dark soul-corrupting level. It’s a lot to take in and a little longer than it needed to be, but it’s a big, heaping, cold-as-fuck plate of revenge flick that I couldn’t help getting swept up in, and I liked it a lot. Through grit teeth, but I liked it a lot. The fact that this bukake of blood and ultra-violence felt justified to me made me take a long hard look at myself. Guess what I Saw in the mirror?
Anyways, between Devil and 13 Assassins I’ve decided to take up the sword once more. Consider me back on board, Asian Cinema. Ready to die. Kill ‘em all. You with me? Come on! Trust me, gaijin. Even if you can’t bring yourself to see the Devil, don’t dodge Assassins. I mean, it has the word ‘ass’ in it twice, back to back. Or, for my Requiem For A Dream-heads: “Ass-To-Ass.” Plus, you gotta see a movie that has the line “I shall accomplish your task… with magnificence.” Right?
– Nuv
