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

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

When the slicing and dicing and blood-spurting become as unstoppably frenzied as they do in the course of Ninja Assassin, one's instinct is less to take fright than take 40 winks and hope to wake up when it's all over.

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

Shot like a bad episode of Spooks with its scenes set on random shuffle, the plot of this global pudding is utterly incomprehensible, the dialogue the worst kind of chopsocky silliness.

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

The first time we see heads roll it's entertaining. The second time it's boring. The eighth time...

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

Perhaps such phenomenal slaughter is best left to the imagination.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 2, 2009

The problem is that the fight sequences -- the only reason anyone sees a movie like this in the first place -- are muddy, chaotic and boring. Even diehard fans of this genre would be well advised to skip this one.

Full Review | Nov 30, 2009

Ninja Assassin has little opportunity to fill its action-free beats with dread or tension.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 27, 2009

This saga, set in Berlin, is more committed to its bloodletting than to any of its characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 25, 2009

A movie that provides plenty of jolts but precious little pleasure.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 25, 2009

Rain and Harris are decent and there are moments of stylized lunacy that nearly work, but Ninja Assassin is a film that falls apart as soon as you think about any single element of it.

| Nov 25, 2009

This movie knows exactly what it is: Gonzo silliness about bodies turned into human salsa.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 25, 2009

Shouldn't throwing stars be silent? If they're gonna sound like gunshots, why not just use guns?

| Nov 25, 2009

It's a gorefest, a borefest and a snorefest.

| Nov 25, 2009

Thanks to the movie's dire script, flat performances and excessively slick, tricked-out fight scenes, it gets increasingly hard to care about anything that goes on here, even when it happens to be visible without the use of night-vision goggles.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 25, 2009