Last night I saw Shinobi at jayra's place. My initial impressions were quite favourable. I also had little idea it was based on an anime.

The film is Romeo and Juliet with ninja. It takes places at a true historical period in time (although Ieyasu Tokugawa was much less 'immense' than in real-life): shortly after Tokugawa's outmaneuvring of his fellow regents to become Shogun (also showing Tokugawa's unwillingness to give Hideyoshi's soon the power he said he'd protect, albeit shown through omission).

Unfortunately, reality stops there... the film, as a friend rightly said, takes on an X-Men feel with its treatment of the ninja. It's such a damn shame, because in all but this, the film is pretty straight. Hattoi Hanzo's ninja are given a more realistic protrayal, albeit getting whooped by Generation Edo (see what I did there... Generation X... Edo Period? No? Damn). The ninja villages are gorgeous in realization (like the rest of the movie), and could have easily have felt real. Furthermore, with the X-Men nonsense (I'm all for mutant powers, just in their rightful places) comes a dependency on CGI. Admittedly, the CGI is pretty impressive, but perhaps approaching Lucas over-use.

Now, if you want a movie which plays up the fantastic element to ninja, a kind of Japanese wuxia, then this is a good place to look. It is by no means a bad movie, but the OTT 'powers' does kind of spoil it for me (including a wolf-man, face-shifter, poison ivy sans plants, and nigh on immortal guy). For me, Azumi got the balance right. Then again, Shinobi has to stick to its source material on some levels. At least it was much better than Red Shadow, which was B-movie-esque, but fun in place.

I guess it is quite difficult to make a straight-up ninja movie. For a start, the history of ninja is hardly concrete and there is a lot of fiction out there. Furthermore, take away the ninpo and ninja suddenly seem to be little more than crafty buggars. Perhaps the Azumi-style treatment is best... Ninja Gaiden (the game) did what I felt to be an excellent ninpo and all treatment of the ninja myth... in a unique setting too.

I guess you cannot win by me, with regards to ninja. Oh well, there is always Real Ultimate Power.

PS: Why on earth is 'lizzie mcguire movie' suggested as a tag?