'Ninja Assassin': Sword-and-splatter to the max

In Japan, there's a rich tradition of sword-and-splatter pictures. That's the tradition Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" leaned on, and it's the foundation of "Ninja Assassin," a more run-of-the-mill Hollywood ninja movie with "Matrix" ties.

For a thousand years, "The Nine Clans" have taken in orphans from around the world and have forged — OK, literally beaten — them into coldblooded killing machines. Meet their price and they'll kill anybody you say.

Ozuno (Sho Kosugi) trains his clan to kill without mercy — orphans beating and killing other orphans. Raizo (the Korean actor Rain of "Speed Racer") remembers this brutal training in flashbacks. He wears the scars of those years on that mountaintop clan hideout. But he got out. Now hiding in Berlin, he tries to help those the clan has marked for death.

The action is dark and savage in this Wachowskis-produced film from their "Matrix" protégé James McTeigue. The brawls are graphic in the extreme — the most realistic decapitationsever filmed.

However, "cool" was the only goal here, and I have to say "Ninja" just isn't cool enough. Rain makes a charismatic coiled spring of a hero. But there's more to making sword-and-splatter work than just shiny blades and blood. It's got to have an edge, and the one on "Ninja Assassin" is dull as a butter knife.