American Ninja (1985)

Fresh and Exciting

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

American Ninja is a ridiculous action film, even worse by Cannon standards of the mid 1980s.Michael Dudikoff lacks charisma and screen presence as the mysterious Joe with a criminal past and elite martial arts skills but with no idea how he got them.He has arrived at an US Army base in the Philippines where he is a bit of a loner. Almost immediately on his first mission driving a convoy of trucks, the American soldiers are attacked by a group of filipino rebels who try to steal their weapons and take colonel's daughter, Patricia. Joe is to the rescue as Patricia just screams and irritates.Joe discovers that people in the US army base are involved in gun running with local mercenaries but not too many people believe him.A feeble B movie, with ineptly staged action scenes.

The first action scene alone is worth watching this 1985 movie over, as unarmed American soldiers take down Filipino mercenaries armed with Automatic weapons. It stars with a blast, literally, and just keeps getting better. I mean, ninjas in the Philippines, does it get any better than that?This movie has it all; stereotypical villain, martial arts, goons unable to-hit anything more than an inch away, lots of action and of course ninjas! Granted this is not Shakespearian cinema, but it is still entertaining for the campy thing it is. And it was also a trip down memory lane to my childhood."American Ninja" is predictable to the core, sure. But it still has an entertaining enough storyline. The background story of Joe doesn't make much sense. But all this can be looked past because this is, after all, a ninja movie! You know that when someone snatches your arrow out of its trajectory and breaks it that you have found your arch nemesis.As for the action and martial arts, taking into consideration that it is from 1985, then it was adequate and did what it was supposed to. However, if you haven't seen the 1980's ninja movies, and only watch todays martial arts movies, I believe you will not be impressed with "American Ninja".In all its cheesy, campy self "American Ninja" is an entertaining enough movie if you want to kill some time with a no-brainer movie.

It's "Die Hard" for ninjas. There ain't no such thing as too much Michael Dudikoff, baby. The real centerpiece of the film is its acting, mainly that of Dudikoff. I really like this type of film, as it reminds me of French movies where it's more about the characters and their environment. This is a story about a place most people might not be able to conceive. All the characters struggle against a system that has perpetuated falsehoods. Against this backdrop, our hero must fight on. Great performances help to enhance this amazing story of ninja warfare and violence. I give it a rating of 7 out of 10 because it's flawed but good.

American Ninja is a tired martial arts potboiler from the Golan-Globus production team (a pair of Israeli profiteers who unleashed various terrible movies on the world during the 1980s). This one tries to make an action hero of the handsome but thoroughly talentless Michael Dudikoff who, prior to this film, was best remembered for playing a dumb-ass named Ryko in the comedy Bachelor Party. Virtually nothing about American Ninja works, from its appalling score to the utterly routine action sequences. The performances are generally terrible, there's nothing original or interesting in the story department, and even the requisite martial arts moves are far from dazzling. In fact, the only thing that saves this film from the dreaded 1-out-of-10 rating is Steve James's amusing turn as the hero's sidekick. It's not an example of great screen acting by a long shot, but James does manage to embrace the absurd tone of the film with his tongue-in-cheek performance.At an American army base in the Far East there have been a number of ambushes resulting in the loss of military hardware. During a transportation of equipment, more American soldiers are attacked by a number of deadly assassins wearing ninja costumes. The ninjas try to kidnap the Colonel's daughter Patricia (Judie Aronson), who is tagging along, but an American private called Joe Armstrong (Michael Dudikoff) steps in to save her. Joe is a loner and none of the other soldiers know much about him – in fact, he doesn't know much about himself, as he has suffered from amnesia since he was quite young. He does know that he possesses incredible martial arts skills, and occasionally has flashbacks during which he recalls being trained as a boy by a mysterious Japanese mentor. Joe discovers that the army supplies are being stolen by a corrupt businessman, Victor Ortega (Don Stewart), who includes arms dealing among his list of misdemeanours. Ortega has a private army of ninjas guarding his lair and Joe has to take them on in order to put a stop to the bad guy's nefarious plans.The movie had a relatively cheap budget of $1,000,000 and grossed about ten times that amount. It is hardly surprising that Messrs. Golan and Globus were able to carry on churning out this kind of rubbish if 80s audiences were content to keep lining their pockets in such a manner. Everything about American Ninja shows signs of shoddiness. Dudikoff seems to have difficulty delivering the most straightforward of lines, and his expression barely changes during the course of the movie. The action scenes are simply ludicrous, with staggeringly inept bad guys – on this evidence even Dolly Parton could whoop their asses in a fight. The film even attempts to incorporate a few plot twists in the latter stages – with certain "good" characters turning out to be allied with the bad guys – but these twists are both heavy-handed and unsurprising. On the whole, American Ninja is thoroughly low-grade trash with nothing to recommend it.