NINJA

Ninja is a 2009 martial arts film about an orphaned American who was left at a dojo in Japan when he was a child and trained in the ways of the--you guessed it!--ninja. (Ninjas, for those of you needing a history lesson, were mercenaries and/or assassins who operated back in feudal Japan until they were completely outlawed by the Japanese government and forced to operate underground. Or something like that!) Anyway, the plot of Ninja has been seen in countless other martial arts/ninja flicks: the American has a heated rivalry going with another member of the dojo. When said rival is ousted by the sensi for disobeying the rules, he becomes a brutal assassin-for-hire who vows revenge against the dojo who ousted him. He also wants a "secret weapon" that the dojo is hiding so it doesn't all into the wrong hands. When the ousted member comes to the dojo and makes a not-so-thinly veiled threat, the sensi asks the American and his daughter--whom said American has the apparent hots for--to take said "secret weapon" to a "friend" of his for safe-keeping. Along the way, they get violently attacked by the thugs who work for the underground crime organization that the ousted dojo member works for who end up killing the sensi's friend. The American and the sensi's daughter gets arrested by police for the murder. While they're being interrogated by police, the ousted dojo member breaks into the police station--after he attacks the dojo and ends up killing his former sensi--where he kidnaps the girl. After going after the crime organization his rival works for, the American offers the "secret weapon" in exchange for the girl. You can probably figure out the rest here, can't you? Actually, in spite of its familiar plot, Ninja is for the most part a pretty decent martial arts film and not nearly as cheesy as I thought it would be. It helped that the acting was actually better than what one normally sees in a flick like this (and, believe you me, the acting in at least some of these flicks tends to be sub-par at best!). Plus the fight scenes--and, of course, there are plenty of them--are actually well-choreographed. For those who are into martial arts/ninja films, Ninja might be worthy of a look (especially since they don't seem to make as many of these type of flicks as they used to).