The latest from V for Vendetta director McTeigue arrives just in time to challenge Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever as the most incoherent Warner Bros. release of the decade. Ninja Assassin is a mishmash of haphazard fights, badly inserted flashbacks and florid one-liners, although the protagonist’s handstands on a bed of nails are admittedly pretty impressive. The film features Korean pop star (and Stephen Colbert nemesis) Rain as a ninja mercenary who turns against the clan that kidnapped and trained him. The group raises orphans to become unstoppable killers for high-bidding governments; they also learn the ability to heal their wounds with magic, which makes it easy for them to survive and difficult for the movie to end.

The action seems unbound by spatial, temporal or even biological consistency—how many characters can be born with hearts on the wrong sides of their chests? Rain is more dancer than martial artist, but the movie labors under the delusion that dimming the lighting and slamming random pieces of film together will make him look like Bruce Lee. More energy seems to have been spent on the arterial spray than the script (redrafted by Changeling scribe J. Michael Straczynski), which casts a journalist (Harris) as an expository sounding board. Impossibly dull, moronic and cynical, Ninja Assassin makes one eager for the return of comparatively creative ninjatainments, like Surf Ninjas and 3 Ninjas.

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