- Title: Ninja (2009)
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to 2009’s Ninja starring Scott Adkins as an American raised in a Japanese temple tasked by his sensei (Togo Igawa) to protect the temple’s most sacred artifacts from a rival former student (Tsuyoshi Ihara) using the skills taught to him to become one of the world’s deadliest assassins.
Ninja is the kind of movie where the police get involved, but only manage to get in the way or arrest the wrong person until they step back to let the ninja fight. Very much the B-action movie it appears to be, Ninja also teases a love story between Casey (Adkins) and the sensei’s daughter (Mika Hijii) as well as Casey’s search for family. Neither amount to much as the film works best when director Isaac Florentine queues up the rivals’ series of action scenes.
While more successful than the flashier Ninja Assassin, released the same year, Adkins proves to be a wooden leading man chosen for his physique over acting ability. The scenes following the evil ninja’s assassinations prove far more interesting almost to the point where we forget who we should be rooting for.
