The state of online, student-made ninja films is deplorable. There, someone needed to say it. Luckily, we have The Tenchu Reel Ninja Film Contest, found at www.ninjafilmcontest.com, a competition sponsored by Activision which features some of the best homemade ninja films by college-age directors around.
In contrast to many indie films which display a more artistic aesthetic, these films take a more straightforward approach that echos the John Woo aesthetic of action films—making it appropriate that John Woo was chosen to select the winner. While not always living up to the high standards set by well-choreographed, studio-produced ninja films, some of the entries exhibit a great deal of ambition and promise. Others show absolutely no ambition or promise, and the result is an uneven mix.
The clear winner among the group is the appropriately titled The Ninja Movie by Joshua Gorin of the University of Pennsylvania. A battle between a group of heavily-armed thugs and a ninja in a snowy graveyard, it’s clear why John Woo chose this one as his favorite, as the film includes ample amounts of gunplay and stylish violence. The film creates an atmosphere of suspense by making use of close-ups and low-angle shots. Every aspect of the production, from the sound and camerawork to the editing, is surprisingly professional, making the film a clear standout.
Wanna Woo by Florida State student Lee Cipolla is one of the better films screened in the competition. Essentially a fight sequence between a ninja and a member of the military, the film boasts some creative shots and sequences, as well as possible anti-war undertones. This action short is especially notable for its effective use of sound effects merged with quick editing to create tension and excitement. The film loses ground during the choreographed fight scenes, which are ultimately pretty lame and uninteresting. Combine this with a weak punch-line instead of an ending and you get a film with some interesting ideas and approaches but little real substance holding it together.
There are also the films that do little more than give the genre of online student-made ninja films a bad name. These tend to be lower-quality films that revolve around one bad idea beaten into the ground, or parodied for the sake of getting a few cheap laughs from joking about ninjas. Examples of this include the film Cool Ninja, which has a nerdy college student training to be a ninja in order to get revenge on a group of bullies. Brother, Can You Spare Some Sushi? is another film with a one-joke premise (a ninja holding a ‘will assassinate for food’ sign is challenged by another unemployed ninja) that runs out of ideas soon and wears thin.
And then there are the films that are neither poorly done, yet don’t stand out for any particular reason, leaving one with the vague feeling that it has been done before, and done better. Fatal is a film that relies on a twist ending, but with no time to develop a plot or context for the characters’ actions, the ending is pointless, leaving the film as little more than just a stilted fight scene with no new tricks. Ninja Justice is another film that tries to fit too much plot into too little space. The overall impression one takes from the piece is that it was edited down from a longer film, distilling it down to the essentials of fighting and throwing stars while leaving behind superfluities like exposition. Despite its faults, the film boasts some of the better action sequences featured in the competition.
Films of the online, student-made, ninja variety belong to one of the more marginalized genres of modern cinema. Fortunately, through the effort of venues such as The Reel Ninja Film Contest, and websites such as www.realultimatepower.net, word is spreading about this under-recognized and under-appreciated niche of contemporary cinema. A notable endeavor considering that, honestly dude, ninjas are freakin’ sweet.
