Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
I believe I mentioned this before but a surefire way to get me to watch some movie is putting the word ‘Ninja’ somewhere in the title. I love Ninja. I think that’s the plural, right? Not Ninjas or Ninjii. In fact one of my best friends is a ninja. Not only is he a ninja but he’s a White Guy Ninja, like Michael Dudikoff or some shit. I kid you not. Those evil bastards at Lionsgate are clearly aware of my ninja predilection which is why they changed the title of this awful movie from ‘Royal Kill’ to ‘Ninja’s Creed’. Eventually we would’ve watched this movie, if for no other reason than Eric Roberts is in it and we like E-Rob almost as much as we cherish ninja, but calling your movie ‘Ninja’s Creed’ coupled with E-Rob and a sprinkle of a scantily clad super fit Asian chick on the box cover holding weapons of death dealing destruction… It’s moved up the list to number one. But I’m not mad that Lionsgate has tricked me, yet again. No, not at all. In fact I’m pleased I moved ‘Ninja’s Creed’ up the list to number one because this means I got it out of the way and can move on with my life.
The evil Scungi (?) barbarians have invaded the good land of Samaria (?) and have dispatched their brutal ninja assassin Nadia (Gail Kim), trained by the mystical Old Asian Dude (Pat Morita) to murder the royal family of Samaria to completely suppress the Samarian revolt. You know… Pat Morita has been dead an awful long time. Probably too long to be showing up in movies that were released a week ago. But there is still one lone heir to the Samarian crown, a princess (Lalaine) living in the United States under the guard of an American (E-Rob) posing as her father. The dying king of Samaria has dispatched one lone soldier, Adam (Alexander Wraith), to protect the princess from Nadia’s lethal blade and bring her back to Samaria to rejuvenate her people and save the nation that she had no idea she was a part of.
That all sounds halfway decent in theory right? So Nadia and Adam have descended upon Washington D.C. to find this Princess with Nadia leaving dead bodies in her path. Eventually they both locate the girl, Adam barely saving her life as they flee from the woman with the bad intentions. While trying to get to the Princess, Nadia kills up a crapload of Washington D.C.’s finest and blows up building. Eventually Adam gets tired of running and makes the decision that its time to take stand and end this nonsense because, you know, the good people of Samaria are depending on him. Now its showdown time as the brutal assassin with the thighs of thunder must do battle with the earnest soldier with the Abs of Steel with the fate of nation in the balance.
If only that were it. Observing my little DVD counter I could see that were at least a good forty or so minutes left in this movie after the showdown which had me somewhat concerned. What was supposed to happen for the next forty minutes? This was when, unfortunately, that a movie that was simply bad became absolutely terrible.
Taken as simply a subpar B-Movie ‘Ninja’s Creed’ had some potential. True enough director Babar Ahmed made some strange directing decisions, and even stranger editing decisions as this movie was cut with plenty of slow-mo and shaky cam for no real apparent reason except, I guess, to create the illusion of excitement where there wasn’t any. We’re big fans of Eric Roberts here at the FCU but in this particular role he seemed half asleep most of the time and I don’t know if the late Pat Morita was actually in this movie or the producers just lucked up on some unused stock footage of Pat Morita and did the best they could to splice him into this movie since it was pretty clear Morita and the majority of our actors were never together at the same time. Heck, the same goes for Eric Roberts. The best thing about this movie was Gail Kim’s athleticism, but she only got a chance to really display to us this supreme athleticism of hers in one scene, so for a movie with ‘Ninja’ in the title there was an amazing dearth of Ninja action to be witnessed, but then that’s the fault of Lionsgate marketing. But, again, as a bad action movie it was a tolerable bad action movie.
Then things had to go get twisty on us. Not every movie needs a Kaiser Sose or an ‘I See Dead People’ moment. The truth of the matter is that not everyone is equipped to adequately write these clever twisty movies. In fact not everyone is equipped to even make movies but that’s another discussion for another day. ‘Ninja’s Creed’ is a good example of a movie that would’ve been so much better if it had just kept it simple. Overmatched earnest dude trying to protect a helpless girl against a lethal hot chick. Who can’t get with that? Run with that. But unfortunately someone tried to get clever and thus ‘Ninja’s Creed’ was doomed.
In defense of the filmmakers, I often get notices of meddling production companies who intervene and take movies that were at one time lucid and make critical changes which ultimately transform these movies into incoherent nonsense, so we’re going to go ahead assume this to be the case with this one. But the fact remains that ‘Ninja’s Creed’ is a pile of jumbled up incoherent nonsense. Watching a perfectly decent bad movie transformed into something horrible pleases no one. At least no one I know.
