Urban Ninja 2 Article

A little article in a U.K. pub about Urban Ninja 2.

By Andrea Clarke
A YOUTUBE movie filmed in Derry has received over a million hits.

The spoof ninja flick shows American actor Rob Hoffman running around the city dressed in black scaring unsuspecting locals.

The funny man was filming Dublin director Paddy Breathnach’s horror movie Shrooms when he decided to don his urban ninja costume.

Hoffman, who is a cast member on MTV’s Wild ‘N Out, writes, directs, and stars in several short skits, most notably Kinetsu Hayabusa the Urban Ninja, in which he dresses in a black ninja outfit and performs stunts around a city to the fright of passers by.

The second in a series of short mockumentaries about Kinetsu Hayabusa, Urban Ninja II was filmed in Northern Ireland.

Rob can be seen in Derry’s Waterside, the city’s shops, the Walls of Derry and also in the neighbouring County Donegal jumping out in front of cars and pedestrians.

The ninja skits have garnered Hoffman, who is also a dancer and choreographer, a large fan following, with over 1.2 million hits on YouTube for Urban Ninja II alone.

One Northern Ireland fan posted: “I was literally across the street when he jumped out from behind the wall at that girl who ran away, it was deadly craic! Mucho respect to the urban ninja”!

[As of 6/9/09, the video has now received 4,679,379 hits on youtube. My guess is that Urban Ninja 3 was filmed in New Zealand (just a random feeling I have). As great as these videos are, it would be hard for Rob to translate this into the big screen, or even the small screen - and he's said as much in other articles. As more and more people see his videos, it's going to get harder to pull it off. That's what happened to Tom Green once his show hit MTV. He couldn't pull his pranks anymore, and unless Rob does what @aplusk did and hires actors to punk the ignorant, it's not going to work. And who wants to see other actors do this stuff? I'd rather see Rob.]