American Ninja
The deadliest art of the Orient is now in the hands of an American.
Joe Armstrong, an orphaned drifter with little respect for much other than martial arts, finds himself on an American Army base in The Philippines after a judge gives him a choice of enlistment or prison. On one of his first missions driving a convoy, his platoon is attacked by a group of rebels who try to steal the weapons the platoon is transporting and kidnap the base colonel's daughter.
- Year: 1985
- Country: United States of America
- Genre: Action
- Studio: The Cannon Group, Golan-Globus Productions
- Keyword: daughter, sword, rebel, wilderness, ninja, soldier, gaijin
- Director: Sam Firstenberg
- Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Judie Aronson, Guich Koock, John Fujioka, Don Stewart
The Bottom Line A basic action movie from the '80s but it doesn't hold up. Plot An American soldier with special skills gets posted to an island base where someone keeps hijacking military convoys. When his convoy gets hit, he's cooperating right up until someone hits the Colonel's daughter, and then he intervenes. His memory of his childhood is mostly gone from an explosion on an island, but he has obviously had training. When the hijackers send Ninjas after him, it becomes obvious though that his skills are way more than just simple techniques. What I Liked Some of the basic fight scenes are fine, particularly between Joe and the Black Star Ninja. And the opening sequence is really well done. There's a scene where they shoot arrows at him, and he uses the handle on a shovel to deflect their trajectory...highly iconic and when I first saw it as a kid, I was hooked. What I Didn't Like I rewatched it recently, and it just doesn't hold up. As I said, some of the basic fight scenes are good, but the fight scenes with guns seems more like a Stephen J. Cannell TV show where a million bullets are fired but nothing ever hits its target. In addition, some of the stunt work is either done at low speed, shows that it isn't the actor doing the stunt (particularly a motorcycle jump), or in one case, requires a helicopter to hover in place for about 5 seconds for the stunt man to get ready to jump on the front.
The acting is terrible, the scripts and dialogue are terrible, the plot is [extremely] shallow. But, I love this movie... from the 1st time a watched it (a straight to VHS video tape). The fighting sequences are actually pretty well done, and believable. You'll get many laughs out of the non-sensical dialogue and some good entertainment out of the action and fighting scenes. A diamond in the rough, that's for sure.