The Ninja Mission

When I talk about movies, specifically bad movies, I always mention "Ninja Mission". My friend wanted to see it and neither my brother nor I wanted to see it. But my friend begged and promised to pay for our ticket if we didn't like it. As we were leaving the theater without prompting or any words said reached for his wallet and reimbursed us for the movie.

You know a movie is bad when straight teen age boys roll their eye when the cute actress takes off her shirt and think "not even this can save the movie". :-) Yes it is that bad. Yes it was out of the theater in my neighborhood in one day.

This is the magnum opus from the Swedish king of crap, Mats-Helge Olsson. Seldom has a movie of this magnitude been made in Sweden and it truly stands out as one of the most amazing achievements in Swedish film to date. Who pays for these things?

The Russian nuclear scientist Markov wants to defect to Sweden. But his plans are ruined by the Russian military who kidnap him and tell him that he has arrived in Sweden. This trickery is their way of seeing to that Markov continues his work in nuclear physics that will revolutionize the energy supply for the whole planet. The CIA however is bent on getting Markov to the west and send their ninja to liberate him.

The practice of having Swedish actors speaking English is something that Mats-Helge has perfected in his later works. The cheap b-movie feeling this creates is probably unmatched for performance. But besides this? Well the action is standard direct-to-video style. Machine guns firing huge clouds of smoke. Thousands of Russians dying. People running around in black ninja suits, trying to hide in the snow.

What really stands out though is the insanely poor way the fighting scenes are choreographed. When they say "Ninja" in the title i expect martial arts, i expect close combat. But there are maybe two or three scenes of actual martial arts in this movie. And they are hilarious. It's so bad i lack the words to describe it. If the ninjas moved any slower their hearts would stop. And of course the whole movie ends in a bang that indicates a special-effects budget consisting of four food-stamps and a McDonald's voucher.

So what's the verdict? Instant classic of course. Never before has a movie been made that is so obviously meant to be consumed along with huge amounts of alcohol. It's the ultimate party movie. Insert into video and laugh. One just has to realize that movies like these are not made any more. This is film history.

Therefore the rating is 8/10 for entertainment, 1/10 for quality and 10/10 for accents.

There are movies that are so bad they actually turn out to be good. They're just hilarious and entertaining. This movie is even worse than that. It's so bad it's not even "good because it's bad". Avoid it at all cost! I have never said this about a movie, since just about all movies appeal to at least someone. Whe it comes to "The Ninja Mission", I can't think of a single person that would enjoy it. And I know some weird people. Hey, I AM one.

I just watched this film on DVD. It was actually worse than I thought... But let me explain: At first I thought this was going to be a horrible movie, yes. But in an Ed Wood kind of way: It's so horrible it's actually incredible! But this movie isn't. It could have been, but it isn't. But it's still quite "enjoyable" (mind you, it's still horrible).

The dialoge and acting is bad, bad, bad. Remember that. It's really horrible. But it's quite funny in some scenes, because of that! Some scenes almost make it to 'Ed Wood Status'. But those aren't that many. Instead, we are graced with an endless amount of pointless action scenes. The finale, for example, has Ninja firing at an endless amount of guards. The whole thing is just ninja firing at guards, for ten minutes or so! Fun. Not.

Those kind of action scenes are abundant in this film: Ninja/Agents firing at various russian guards and slaughtering them in the thousands. For several minutes... Makes the film quite boring.

Ok, so let's get going on the "plot": A russian scientist, who is working on something that might tip the scale in the russians favour, wants to defect to the western world. But the russians don't want that, obviously, so they send in their agents to try and stop him. But the CIA are allied with the NINJA so, they are up for the task to rescue him at all cost! Yes!

The plot is extremely silly, yet the movie handles it with extreme seriousness. This, of course, grants us some Ed Wood moments, as I have explained. But those few moments are not enough to save this film from boredom, of the action scenes.

I'm not going to review every single aspect of this film, as I use to, as you can imagine: They're all extremely low budget.

Ok, so final verdict: 4. 3 for the Ed Wood moments and 1 for the action! Blerg!

Maybe one of the most entertaining Ninja-movies ever made. A hard-hitting action movie with lots of gore and slow motion (eehaaa!). Made in ´83 and still the greatest swedish action movie made so far! And we can hardly wait to see the upcoming sequel, Ninja mission 2000 - The legacy of Markov!