Hug an Asian and Ninja Assassin

Two things of note today.

1. Today is National Hug an Asian Day.

At least, that's what facebook told me. So if you see me, or my family, you should hug them.

Second. I finally watched Ninja Assassin this past week.

Here is my review:

What happens when you train orphans into assassins? You get assassins. What happens when you promote killing in an emotionally sensitive area to your top assassin? You get revenge. That's the basic plot. Kid grows up being trained to disassociate from pain, to become numb, but you can't stop girls and boys from being girls and boys. Try to kill one, and well, the other will get a little angry at you. This almost falls classically in line with basic Ninja Revenge Theory 101 which postulates that if you kill a young Asian kid's loved one, and you don't kill the kid, the kid will invariably come back to kill you when he is stronger, faster, and better trained. This is spectacularly so when said kid is ALREADY a ninja. Of course there is the Ninja Inverse Proportion theory as well, that evil Ninja Clan should have already known,that states that multiple ninjas versus one ninja will always lose to the one ninja. (see American Ninja, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninja Assassin, the list goes on for examples.)

And the story goes on that Europol, which I thought was the fake Interpol, but is not, is on the trail of actual ninja assassination attempts by following the pattern of people dying and then 100 pounds of gold being moved into bank accounts. An basically there's lots of ninjas killing helpless soldiers and police officers, lots of heads being cut in half (not at the neck), bodies being sliced up, and blood flying all over the place.

And then the movie is over.

Really, that's about it.

Plot: 2/5 --- nothing life changing or unexpected or fresh about the story.

Action 4/5 --- great fight sequences, nothing has ever shown ninjas to be such BAMFs as this movie.

Characters 2/5 --- pretty bland, and pretty average.

Music 2/5 --- I actually can't remember anything about it, but it didn't ever annoy me either.

Ninja awesomeness 5/5 --- ninjas are just awesome.

Final rank: 3/5 --- If you like ninjas already, you'll like this movie, if you don't, well, only if you like martial arts and lots of blood will this interest you, if you want good story with your action, you're better off renting The Last Samurai instead.