Even though I didn’t exactly give Ninja Assasin a rave review when I first saw the film last year during Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX I was still loking forward to seeing it on Blu-ray when it came out. Well, it has and I did watch it on the HD format and all I can say is I’m more impressed with the film now than I was the first time around.

Granted, the story of a boy trained from childhood in the way of the Ninja who is stalked by his former brothers and their dojo master (martial arts legend Sho Kosugi) and who is also on the run with a Europol agent (Naomie Harris) with proof the clan sells assassination services to governments, is still pretty much the same and the flaws I have with it are still pretty much the same. However, experiencing the film on Blu-ray added very much to my enjoyment of it.

I’ll go out on a limb and say one of the main reasons is that the Blu-ray represents the final version of the film with completed visual effects, final color correction, sound, etc. Most likely the version I saw last September was not the final version. This one simply looks and sounds better.

Visual effects, especially the simulated blood (of which there’s a lot) look far better on the Blu-ray version than before. Also, other effects have been cleaned up and the entire presentation of the film has been improved. Plus, you can actually see more of the fight sequences in this version as they have been somewhat lightened, probably due to early screening feedback. Who knows, maybe even I had something to do with it? It’s possible.

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When I watch a movie like James McTeigue’s Ninja Assassin I think about what could have been. Its not that the film is terribly bad, it is just not terribly good. But oh how I wish it was. Nothing would make me happier than to see a resurgence of the ninja movie genre driven by a big budget studio film with all the money, time and craft that could be brought to it.

Instead, we’re given a movie which intercuts the Ninja story with Europol agents and their search for the ninjas. Every time the action cuts away from the story of the ninjas and went to the agents, I was bored. On top of that, the main female researcher is played by Naomi Harris, one of the most annoying and weak actresses in recent memory.

One surprise for me in this film is how much I actually liked Rain in the title role. Sure, his acting for a non-native English speaker isn’t particularly good, but he has a certain screen presence that works here. Seeing him in this film its easy to understand why he has such a huge following in Asia.

Do I wish he was an actual martial artist and could more realistically accomplish the fights himself without the aid of stunt doubles or CGI, of course. Also, the fact that he’s actually Korean and not Japanese and is playing the lead in a very deeply felt Japanese genre film may cause some, as director McTeigue put it after the screening I saw, “push back.” Maybe so, but that’s not really the problem here.

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