转自笑雨
续 #10
It’s been produced by the Wachowski brothers, whom I’m guessing are responsible for the film’s stylized effects, which drive the action sequences to nearly insane heights. There’s fights involving swarms of ninja, crazy stunts, and one particularly good hand-to-hand fight while standing in a busy street. CG effects are often laced in, such as when the hero battles a crowd and the camera speed ramps and bobs in and out similar to the look of 300. A spray of throwing stars are dodged almost like Neo dodging bullets.
What took me by surprise though, was the brutality of the action. Guys are gutted, hit by cars, and stabbed in ways that made the audience repeatedly gasp, and, just as often, applaud. When the hero needs to kill a giant dude in a bathroom, what should be a quick assassination is drawn out into an increasingly vicious fight. By the end, the white tile walls have been sprayed entirely red.
The story is very straightforward and fairly familiar, traveling from the hero’s early days of boyhood training, to the final showdown with the master. But in this similar structure, the training scenes are the most interesting. The school for assassins-in-the-making is more like a punishing prison, forcing kids to fight one another and not be gentle about it. Like the rest of the film, the brutality in these scenes is surprising.
Rain, as an actor, is a huge improvement over his minor role in Speed Racer, although his dialogue is kept short. I just respect the guy for letting himself drop the boy band image to get cut up and ugly with a growing collection of wounds and gore throughout the movie. In an over-the-top gore film, he just rolls with it.
So that’s it. Ninja Assassin is an audience pleaser for sure. Like an amped up, CG-fueled Kill Bill. It may not signal a comeback for the ninja genre, if there was such a thing, but I have to admire a balls-out martial arts flick for the modern age.