Ninja Assassin isn’t a bad movie; it’s just not very involving. The viewer watches from a safe distance as limbs are lopped off, and blood erupts from the body like volcanic blasts, but the ninja rules remain ambiguous.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 30, 2023

Bloodthirsty doesn't even begin to describe the level of splattering carnage found throughout.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 29, 2020

The recipe is equal parts redundant storyline, weak computer generated special effects, poorly developed lighting, and horridly choreographed fight scenes.

| Original Score: 1.5/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

The film has all of the elements I want out of a ninja movie, which is basically a crap load of ninjas and an excessive amount of ninja fights. In this incarnation, apparently every time a ninja does pretty much anything, blood explodes.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 14, 2020

Nothing more than an excuse for violent ninja fighting with a huge body count and plenty of blood - real and CGI.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2012

Ninja Assassin re-opens the door to a genre that has either been absorbed into conventional action movies via pilfered fight choreography or completely forgotten as a viable, creative foundation for interesting stories.

| Feb 15, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

It would be hard to expect any surprises from a film called Ninja Assassin, but on the other hand, it would be hard to be disappointed by it either. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 20, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2011

Has too much story for one movie and ends as merely a mildly entertaining ninja actioner...

| Apr 2, 2011

... it's like a music video of violence that has lost the beat and doesn't care.

| Mar 25, 2010

...one, long, martial-arts fight.... Given the talents involved, we have to mourn what might have been.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Mar 7, 2010

Decent ingredients but, as a whole, this is lacking in choreographic flair and plot substance.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 22, 2010

A garish and poorly filmed chop-socky frolic that makes about as much sense as an Escher painting viewed through Vaseline-smudged Ray-Bans.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 22, 2010

Ninja Assassin is final proof that the once innovative Wachowski Brothers have indeed lost their creative mojo.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 22, 2010

The fight scenes are uninspired and I suspect post-pubescent audiences will be very bored.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 22, 2010

The fight scenes are mostly great. And Rain, so dashing in Speed Racer, is something to behold. His precisely rippled and defined body is awe-inspiring.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 22, 2010

It truly wouldn't take much - a minor re-edit, a few arch looks to camera, a wiseacre sidekick named 'Shortballs' - to inch this utterly mystifying throwback into spoof territory.

Full Review | Jan 22, 2010

Ninja Assassin is little more than a sporadically diverting disposable movie that will probably spawn several straight-to-DVD sequels. The butcher's shop window is still a more fulfilling proposition though.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 22, 2010

The bulk of the fight sequences take place at bed-time so it's difficult to see exactly what's going on - it's like putting a colony of bats in a Magimix. In the dark.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 22, 2010