Jul.26 2009

Trailer Trash MASH, Bloodbath Edition: Ninja Assasin & The Book of Eli

Eli Assasin

Let the bodies hit the floor!!! In this edition of Trailer Trash MASH, we have a couple of flicks for the action junkies, both brought to us by Warner Bros. One looks like across between Mad Max and The Punisher, while the other looks like, The Matrix meets 300, meets every sick martial-arts movie you’ve ever seen combined. Lets start with the latter. The film is called Ninja Assasin and seems like it’s going to push some boundaries in the action genre. The plot seems pretty simple and something that we’ve seen before: A young ninja, trained to be an assassin since childhood, turns his back on the orphanage that raised him after being betrayed, ultimately leading to a quest for revenge. The action, however, looks like something we’ve never seen before.

It’s got everything. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. The fact that the film involves the mythology and training of ninjas, we have amazing, non-stop martial arts fight sequences going on. We have epic gun battles where buildings and people are being ripped apart by bullets. We have intense chase scenes on freeways and in parking complexes with cars getting demolished. We have integrated slow-motion camera movement to enhance the badassness. It just looks sick.

The film stars a very cool Asian actor named Rain, who you might have seen in Speed Racer and/or his appearance on The Colbert Report a couple years ago. I discussed this a few weeks ago when I posted the trailer for Ong bak 2, but I absolutely love martial arts films, and action films of course. This film is all in English, but contains a mostly Asian martial arts cast. It looks as though Warner Bros. is trying to expose America to the awesome world of martial arts and ninjas in the form of an epic, mainstream, bloodbath action movie. And I applaud them for it. This film had a huge crowd at their Comic-Con panel a couple days ago, and blew away the lucky few who were able to attend an advanced screening. Alex Billington from FirstShowing.net and Peter Sciretta from SlashFilm.com made a video blog about District 9 and mentioned their reactions to Ninja Assasin. Alex said, “I fucking loved, LOOOOVEED that movie. It’s the bloodiest thing I’ve seen this year.” Without further ado, check out the trailer for Ninja Assassin which opens everywhere in November.

Up next we have The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington. And as I described it above, it looks like a combo of Mad Max and The Punisher. The story of the film is a post-apocalyptic tale, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind. It’s directed by The Hughes Bros. making their directorial comeback after a near 10-year hiatus. You’ve probably seen their work in the form of Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and From Hell.

Denzel Washington is still kicking ass at age 55, playing the lead of Eli. The brilliant Gary Oldman takes time out of helping to protect Gotham City by playing the villain. And the lovely Mila Kunis plays the female lead. This film also had a successful panel at Comic-Con, although it’s cache might have been muddled by fans asking Oldman about Batman 3. The world that The Hughes Bros. have created is very grim, dirty and desolate. It also looks as though they haven’t skipped a beat from their last film with the appearance of their crisp and illuminating cinematography. The Book of Eli opens in January of next year. Check out the first official trailer below.

What Do You Think? Discuss.

Categories : Trailers

http://intensedebate.com/people/TheSheik TheSheik

With Ninja Assassin, it should be really good as long as it has a coherent plot. Those movies focus on quality action, but the worst ones completely lose sight of any coherent/understandable plot (i.e. Hitman). So, as long as a plot that makes sense and works with some sense will make Ninja Assassins, at the very least, live up to what those people going to see it desire.

The Book of Eli is more interesting to me overall though. Denzel Washington is my favorite actor and I love pretty much all of his movies, but the only thing that seems weird is actually having him fight hand-to-hand in this movie. However, such a good cast (between him and Oldman especially) makes me confident this movie will be awesome, especially with the Hughes Bros. My only concern is that post-apocalyptic movies are coming out left and right now, so something really big has to be in this movie to give it any sense of originality, so I guess we'll see.