Ninja Assassin - How he got trained?

Production on the film is in full swing at Babelsberg Studios, located just a short drive out of central Berlin. “It’s a great facility, and the crews here are fantastic,” comments McTeigue.  “Berlin is a great city to be in.  The film is set partially in Berlin.  And in the way that great noir films of the past used the city itself as a character.

“Ninjas were the shadowy characters who used to always come out of the darkness.  Usually they were brought up under some sort of orphanage, how they are involved with the samurai, how they went back centuries, so that kind of was the framework of it. The fights are much more visceral—if someone gets cut by a sword, their arm comes off,” he notes with a laugh.  “If someone gets hit with a Shuriken, half their back comes out.”  Rain—the Korean pop phenomenon and actor—plays the titular assassin, Raizo, a dangerous ninja taken from the streets as a child and transformed into a trained killer by the Ozunu Clan, a secret society whose very existence is considered a myth.  The part demanded maximum physicality from the lead actor, and with a background in dance, Rain was a quick study in martial arts.  Meeting him in the flesh, he certainly looks every bit the deadly assassin he plays in the film. After months of heavy physical training and choreography, Rain is in peak fitness.  

“I have been training for six months for this film,” Rain says during a break in filming.  “I have learned Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu, movement, weapons training, sword training.  I have learned a lot of stuff.  It’s been hard, but my background in dancing has helped.”

“He’s a sexy character,” Rain says.  “A ninja assassin… I love playing him!  My character is so tough.  There are big fights and he kills a lot of people in this movie—with swords, chains, punches, Shuriken.  This is a wild movie.”

The character represents in some ways a lifelong dream for the actor.  “When I was young, I wanted to be in a martial arts film, so when I was shooting Speed Racer I had chance to talk to the Wachowskis about this film.  And James is the best. He has amazing abilities.  There are some amazing visual effects in this movie that people have probably never seen before.”

“The film’s action is definitely more Asian than American in feel,” Stahelski notes.  “Our whole vibe on this film came down to finding the right people, which we did.  That said, technically we are doing something very different.”

Producer Grant Hill agrees, adding, “One of the things that appealed to everybody at the outset was this idea of taking a Japanese-style approach to the action, but taking it a little bit further, and trying to incorporate a number of other disciplines, and other elements, with extreme sports like free running.  We wanted to incorporate some extreme gymnastic moves into it.  Chad and Dave sent out feelers, and we ended up realizing that in order to bring the best, say, 25 to 30 people together, we were going to have to draw them from all over Asia and the U.S.  The intention was to see if we could blend some of these disciplines with the martial arts we know, and extend it in a direction that would give us some extraordinary possibilities in terms of how we put these action sequences together.  “Our whole theme for this project was human talent and trying to put together the most talented stunt team we could find,” comments David Leitch.  “We took a lot of risks on younger guys that had really specific skills.  They weren't necessarily veteran stunt performers, but we assembled this team to match Rain's abilities.  Because Rain is such an exceptional performer and athlete, we had to surround him with ninjas with equal or better abilities in certain things, so that was a challenge.  That allowed us also to get away from the whole wire-assist thing, and to make it about real acrobatics and real performance.  And that was just going back to what we've always wanted to do.”

The action innovation extended to one of the most intricate action set pieces in the film—a chase through traffic in central Berlin, with the Freedom Tower and Brandenburg Gate in the distance.  “We did this huge outdoor scene in the middle of central Berlin that is just fantastic,” Silver describes.  “You've never seen anything with these ninjas jumping on top of cars, through cars, getting hit by cars.  I think that it's really fresh and exciting and something that people will just enjoy seeing.

Throughout this visit to the set of Ninja Assassin, it has been clear that Stahelski and McTeigue are doing something on this film not seen on screen before.  Much as The Matrix pioneered and popularised ‘Bullet Time,’ Ninja Assassin will break new ground on cinematic action.  To help the filmmakers raise the bar on the action of Ninja Assassin, he worked with McTeigue and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub to create a whole new way of shooting fights.  With Ninja Assassin, we decided to take it to a whole new level.  We have a circular dolly with Rain in the middle, and action happening the whole time around him.  So, it’s like a 45-second piece uncut.”

The professionalism and fierce work ethic of the film’s central actor gave Stahelski the ideal canvas for choreographing outrageous action.  Stahelski attests, “He has a work ethic like no one I have ever worked with.  Rain is definitely an anomaly—a very talented young man.”

“There’s a reason that Rain is huge in Asia,” says McTeigue.  “And the things that he has as a pop star I think he really brought to the film, including his amazing discipline.  I mean, you can show him something once—like, very, very complicated choreography—and he remembers it almost immediately, and then he's probably better than the choreography you showed him.  And I think he really got into the mindset of becoming this physical being that could be in the movie.  As the training went on, he just got better and better.”