With NINJA ASSASSIN, director James McTeigue has attempted to make what may be the first A-level ninja movie. To some, this is an admirable and utterly awesome undertaking; to others, it is madness. Having seen the film (which opens worldwide Wednesday, November 25th), I can confirm that it's actually a bit of both. One one hand, elves and goblins were the stuff of B-movies until Peter Jackson lent J.R.R. Tolkein's LORD OF THE RINGS a little prestige-picture credibility. Why-the-fuck not ninjas? On the other, this movie seems at times to exist as a test-reel for CG limb-rending. It's like the brown-cardboard scribblings of a pimply junior-high-school outcast come to vibrant, bloody life. Not that there's a damn thing wrong with that. What isn't up for debate is the technical proficiency of Mr. McTeigue, who proves with NINJA ASSASSIN that he's got the action-directing chops to call the shots on a major studio tentpole. When the swords and garrotes and throwing stars come out, McTeigue stages the mayhem with bloody aplomb. This should come as no surprise after the visually accomplished V FOR VENDETTA, but since a few people still seems to think the Wachowskis were looming over his shoulder that entire film, here's further proof that McTeigue is a skilled professional in his own right. Aside from bringing the havoc, McTeigue also appears to be a capable world-builder in the mold of a master like Ridley Scott. And while I'm not claiming he's anywhere near that level yet, I'm curious to see what McTeigue does with his next film, a mid-1800s serial killer yarn titled THE RAVEN in which Edgar Allan Poe teams with a Baltimore detective to track down a serial killer. McTeigue has compared the film's tone to Caleb Carr's THE ALIENIST - and since it looks like we're never going to get a proper adaptation of that terrific novel, I'm more than willing to settle for something in the aesthetic ballpark (even if it is down the road from New York City a little). I sat down with McTeigue last Saturday for a brief interview at Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood (just north of Franklin Avenue behind The Magic Castle), and, in a heroic display of restraint, waited close to six minutes before asking my first Shô Kosugi question (as you should know, the star of Cannon's classic NINJA trilogy appears in NINJA ASSASSIN as Rain's nefarious mentor, Ozunu). Aside from Sho, we also get into McTeigue's influences, his surprising lack of conflict with the MPAA, and his plans for THE RAVEN. Enjoy!

Mr. Beaks: It really feels like the fourteen-year-old James McTeigue might've had a hand in directing this film. From the Shaw Brothers to Sho Kosugi, NINJA ASSASSIN often plays like a film from a kid in love with old-school martial arts flicks.

James McTeigue: (Laughs) It was definitely made with that in mind, with my inner-child trying to escape. I grew up watching Japanese TV serials that had ninjas in them, so it was a great homage back to that - and Sho and the Shaw Brothers, of course. It was fun. I really wanted it to be a ninja movie, but I wanted to take it out of the '80s cheese it had gotten enveloped in, and hopefully give it the affectation of an "A" genre picture.

Beaks: Was there a discussion at some point about how "real" you were going to make your ninjas?

McTeigue: The cool thing about ninjas is that they are the cool kind of stealth fighters that appear out of the darkness, attack people, and then disappear back. So I wanted to bring elements of horror into it, with the whispering voices as they come, and then get into using film noir, with that deep shadow/hard light. Also, in anime, there's always some kind of mythic quality, like in NINJA SCROLL or SAMURAI CHAMPLOO. I was interested in blending all of that stuff into it to really play into the mythology of the ninja.

Beaks: In shooting the action, you've employed a good deal of CG, which gives it a manga feel. Did you ever consider doing the action - and, in particular, the violence - more practically? Or would that have been too hard of an R for the studio? Not that this isn't a hard R...

McTeigue: (Laughs) I did use some practical effects on set. There were some blood bags that were removed digitally. But I was also interested in it having a definite style to it. I definitely liked the way NINJA SCROLL dealt with blood, but also video games. I wanted it to be a confluence of the two. So when I sat down with Dan Glass, our visual f/x supervisor [Beaks note: Glass is currently working on Terrence Malick's TREE OF LIFE], I said, "Hey, look, I really want it to have this anime quality." He understood that, and we developed that a lot. Because liquids are really hard to do, actually, in visual effects, and it took a lot of R&D to get that right.

Beaks: And very rarely do people get it right. Usually, CG blood looks so fake. It certainly doesn't spurt right, by which I mean it doesn't have the physical qualities real blood should have. (Laughs) Not that I've seen a lot of arterial blood spurting in my life.

McTeigue: It is hard to do, but I think we got an aesthetic that I really liked. You know, I kind of liked how... I set the tone of the movie, I think, at the start, like, in the tattoo parlor. There were two things I wanted to say in that sequence: "This is not real, but this is a cool aesthetic, and I hope you like it."

Beaks: And it's a very particular aesthetic, which is something you and the Wachowskis have managed to establish in each of your films - from THE MATRIX movies on to V FOR VENDETTA and SPEED RACER and this. And it doesn't seem like a progression as much as it is experimenting with different looks and techniques. Are you sort of cycling through a variety of styles? (McTeigue laughs.) I mean that as a compliment, by the way.

McTeigue: I guess it's partially that. But a lot of that stuff is subconscious, I would say. The people you work with, the films you watch, the books you read, the art that you're interested in - I think that all informs you aesthetic. And I think you ultimately want to keep pushing yourself forward; you want to keep doing things to keep you interested. It's a development of a style. And I think, if you look at V FOR VENDETTA, you can see that the same person made this film.

Beaks: I know that you made a conscious effort to stay away from wire work on this film - which is nice, because the fights feel more brutal without it. You're also not afraid to stand back and let us appreciate the fight choreography.

McTeigue: That was a conscious choice. I've been involved in films with a lot of wire work, so it was good to let this film breathe a little more. As you know, wire work makes the fighting feel... well, it gives it a definite style.

Beaks: It's balletic.

McTeigue: Right. But in this, I was interested in taking it to a different place. And I was very lucky to have Rain. On most films, you take it up to a certain point, and then you go, "Okay, now I'm going to insert the stunt guy." But Rain was incredible - and he kept allowing us to leave him in longer and do really incredible, complicated stuff. It's nice to see that it's him [onscreen] most of the time.

Beaks: It sounds like he was game for everything, but was there anything you thought he couldn't pull off?

McTeigue: There was one shot where he's limping over these pipes in the safe house area. They were a good height up, like twenty-five or thirty feet, and all he had on him was safety wire, so if he fell, we would pull him up just short of the ground. (Pause) It helps being twenty-five [years old], by the way. (Laughs) But he was up for anything. And he has natural ability: he's limber and has all of that dance stuff and the muscle memory; I'm sure he's counting off dance steps in his head.

Beaks: Pitting him against Sho... was that special for Rain on any level? I'm going to assume it was special for you. And, you know, how's Sho moving at this point in his career?

McTeigue: Man, Sho is like working with a ninja encyclopedia. He's Ninja-Wiki, right? He is so fit. I remember the first day we put him into training and were going to do some simple choreography, he really kicked the stunt guy's ass. He's, like, sixty-something, but super fit. He's really cut. I guess it's because he practices every day. But in the final battle between those two, Sho was really great. And he was really fun to have on set, even though he's so mean in the movie.

Beaks: Was Rain trying to up his game when he was fighting Sho?

(Spoiler comin'!)

McTeigue: He was. Sho was so iconic in the ninja genre. He sort of was the ninja genre. So it was nice to have him there. It was like a changing of the guard: the old guy versus the young guy. That's why we gave Sho such a visceral death, I guess. (Laughs)

(Spoiler all gone now!)

Beaks: That's only fair and appropriate. I mean, it's what we expect from these types of films.

McTeigue: It's nice to hear you say that. You don't want to make a ninja movie that doesn't serve what the ninja movies of yore accomplished. I remember we did a test screening out in Long Beach, and we had one of those focus groups after it. It was almost exactly how the film is at the moment, and they all said, "Please don't water this down! Please don't!" And I said, "Look, I'm going to not water it down."

Beaks: But was there any pressure from above to do just that? To maybe go for a PG-13?

McTeigue: No, there wasn't. To tell you the truth, I was worried that I might get an NC-17. But I think the MPAA really understood that it was stylized. They gave us a rating that was R for "stylized blood and violence." I guess they understood the movie, that it was a cross between games and other films.

Beaks: Your next film, THE RAVEN, is going to be something of a departure from this. I was really happy to hear you compare it to THE ALIENIST in an earlier interview. That was a book that was never made into a film because the cost of realizing that world onscreen was always deemed prohibitive. So my question to you is... (Laughs) how are you going to create the world of 1850s Baltimore without going wildly over-budget? It is 1850s, right?

McTeigue: Yeah. People get sticky about that 1850s thing because [Edgar Allan] Poe died in 1849. The thing that I like to do, whether it's V FOR VENDETTA or NINJA ASSASSIN, is create the world. Ultimately, what I'm trying to do with THE RAVEN is create Poe's 1850s Baltimore. I'm not trying to make a biopic; I'm not trying to say this is historically correct. I'm just trying to say, "Look, here's a really cool version of 1850s Baltimore with Poe in it." The story is completely fictionalized. I just want to take you for a ride in the cinema.

Beaks: The idea of Poe running around looking for clues is odd. I've always imagined Poe being a weak, consumptive fellow. I never thought he'd be up for a good deal of sleuthing. How are you going to portray him?

McTeigue: Well, there is a co-lead in the film who is the actual detective. His name is "Fields". And they sort of team up. The script is really cool. It has a methodology to it. It'll be fun - like SE7EN crossed with a Poe horror story.

Sounds great. And if this puts pressure on Paramount to cough up $200 million for a Scott Rudin-produced THE ALIENIST (directed by Philip Kaufman), all the better. Until then, enjoy the gratuitous visceral pleasures of NINJA ASSASSIN - which is, to its credit, everything you expect from a film titled NINJA ASSASSIN. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks