Ninja Assassin

Ninja Assassin almost had me going. The first part is pretty cool and the effects and gore are superlative. However by the third act the film has morphed into a routine actioner with guns versus martial arts. Frankly, I expect a little better from James McTeigue the director of one of my favorite films of the decade V For Vendetta.
A ninja sect thousands of years old will accept a mission for 100 pounds of gold. With gold currently worth, say, $1169 an ounce that would make a pound of gold worth $18, 704. Multiply that by 100 and a contemporary ninja clan can rake in the dough. Ninja Assassin starts out interestingly enough with a Europol police division investigating a ninja connection to political killings. The genre conventions are used with a sense of skill, only once the film has painted itself into a corner there's nowhere to go but bullets and even more convention.
There are some great set pieces like the mountaintop monastery where kidnapped orphans train for the ninjahood and the climatic ending takes place. Crunk bloody effects effects include ninja stars used to sever limbs and decapitate heads. Ninja Assassins is a slick film with a pro look but the movie will quickly reside along other nominal ninja titles and overall will never be counted in the Wachowski/McTeigue pantheon.