Pet peeve

I like ninjas. I like action flicks. I unapologetically like bad movies. My brother called Ninja Assassin the best bad movie he's seen in years, and I'm inclined to agree.

I mean, this flick has everything: swords, ninjas, awesome fights, and over-the-top, CGI enhanced blood effects. It's spectacularly stupid, but decently-acted and choreographed, and shows a surprising attention to detail when it comes to shot-to-shot continuity. (Lots of action movies don't, and it can be annoying when it's glaring, like in Gladiator when Maximus does the double-sword decapitation and the shots are constantly flipped so his left hand and right hand are reversed. Seriously, watch that scene again and tell me it doesn't take you out of the flick to see such blatant discontinuity.)

So what's got my dander up? The fucking money shot, that's what.

You know what I'm talking about; all action movies have that scene where the hero not only beats the villain, but fucking destroys him with some creative deathblow. In Heat, Waingro gets Mozambiqued by Neil after he gets the shit pistol-whipped out of him; Miami Vice has one main villain get a fist-sized chest wound courtesy of a 40mm shotgun shell blast while the other gets shot in the head, twice; the aforementioned Gladiator has Commodus stabbed in the throat with his own dagger; and the list goes on.

So, right, Ninja Assassin: After a pretty cool fight scene, the hero, Raizo, after having the shit slashed out of him for five minutes, finally gets the upper hand against the Big Bad, and proceeds to slash his arm off, slash his achilles tendon, the works. Raizo approaches the wounded, kneeling baddie from behind with his blood-splattered sword at the ready, he performs a cool little flip and stabs the blade into his opponent's shoulder, burying it all the way to the hilt. I'm thinking, awesome! Pretty cool way to dispatch the dude. But it gets BETTER! After the dude fountains gore for a few seconds, Raizo grips the sword with his other hand and proceeds to rip it out from right-to-left, effectively cutting the baddie in half. Awesome!

And then... it all goes to shit. Cut to an overhead shot of the two opponents, the baddie's severed arm still clutching his sword, and not only has the villain's clothing not been even remotely inconvenienced, but there's NO FUCKING BLOOD COMING OUT OF WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A GAPING WOUND.

Let me put this into perspective: I said earlier that the movie was pretty damn good with shot-to-shot continuity, such that when Raizo gets slashed in a fight, his clothing gets cut along with him and stays cut until a warddrobe change. For the entire movie they got it noticeably right, and then at the fucking climax, they completely and utterly blow their wad.

Put it this way, it would be like fucking Highlander ending with "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE," decapitation, and then next week fucking McCloud has tea with the Kurgan because his head is still attached to his fucking shoulders. Goddamn this shit annoys me.