James McTeigue appears to begin his Ninja Assassin with a very simple promise:  Bad acting will quickly be met by massive amounts of violence and arterial blood spray. Oh, James, if only you had made good on that promise and thrown bad writing in for good measure.  Then you would have a film I could get behind. Then this would be a film I could enjoy and recommend without reservation. But alas, your promise is too soon abandoned and all we are left with is scene after scene filled with horrible performances, pointless characters, and an incredible array of expensive action sequences so perversely over-edited, over-CGI'd, and shot in environments so dark that we can barely see a damn thing.

A memo to screen writer J. Michael Straczynski: Next time you write a script in fifty-three hours it is probably not a great idea to brag about it to the press. I mean, if you wrote a good script in fifty-three hours, sure, that would be one thing, but this? Only a total ass could be proud of laying a turd of this magnitude. Future employers will be very interested to know just how little time and effort you put into this one when considering you for future jobs, I am sure.

Story? There ain't much of one, but what there is goes like this: Ninja clans have existed for over a thousand years, accepting payment of one hundred pounds of gold in exchange for killing pretty much anyone you feel needs killing. They are silent, deadly, and invisible -- all of those good ninja-y things. But as it turns out, they are not so good at remaining unnoticed. They're bad enough at that, in fact, that a junior Europol office researcher with no reason to research ninja culture at all has realized that they still exist and are plying their trade unnoticed by anyone else. She takes about five minutes to convince her superior of this fact and then another five minutes or so to dig up a conclusive, documented history of the clans -- INCLUDING VIDEO TAPED EVIDENCE -- but the two intrepid Europol officers must keep this fact a secret because the rest of Europol might laugh at them for believing in the existence of ninjas. Because, you know, international police organizations find international rings of assassins a funny thing. Oi. And also a ninja who is unhappy that his clan killed his would-be girlfriend has gone rogue, plans to kill off the clan that trained him, and somehow magically knows that the Europol agents have inside information on the clans in general, and that his clan in particular wants to kill them, so he sets off to save their lives.  Well, only one of their lives, really. Just the girl. Because she is special. Forget about the guy, he can fend for himself. How the ninja knows this and why he cares remains a total mystery throughout, though he does spout some junk about needing Europol help to get to his former clan, which makes no sense since he knows far more about the clan (such as where they live) than Europol is ever likely to and all Europol agents really seem to be good at is dying. This all ends with a squad of paramilitary officers driving through the clan gates in hummers and blowing stuff up with rocket launchers while rogue ninja boy waits until girl agent has been stabbed through the chest and he himself is on the brink of death before realizing "Hey, SHIT!  I'm a NINJA! I can do that same high-speed zippy thing that all the other ninjas have been doing for the whole damn movie! Maybe if I do THAT instead of standing still like a chump while getting carved up I can actually WIN this fight!"  And the girl survives because her heart is on the wrong side of her body. The end.

There is one good thing in this movie, though. Korean pop star Rain's abs are fantastic.