User Reviews

Although others might disagree, I strongly believe that there are far too many beautiful moments in this film that do demand mention and critique :

· Close you eyes and LISTEN to the last few seconds of the credit's score. That is one *enraged* horn.

· There are lots of chubby and scruffy-haired men in The Army in this movie.

· In the 1st back-shot, there is obviously no gun on the first hijacker that approaches the caravan. In the next two shots, there obviously is a gun strapped behind him.

· Dudikoff does a lot of bunny hops and touchdown-dives in his first battle sequence for no apparent reason.

· Black Army Dude : Gets shot in the back with an arrow AND gets stabbed in the stomach with a sword. Later, when Black Star Ninja orders his men after Joe, can be seen getting up and walking off the set. (*)

· The First Truck that Dudikoff helps out in the first shot leaves with its back flap open. Later, it's tied down.

· Ninja's carefully sliding down palm tree's like Ghostbusters's

· (*) ALSO : The second arrow that the Palm Tree Ninja fires at the 2nd Army dude is in the scene before he fires it.

· Not even his commanding officers seem to know Joe's name or rank.

· Everybody makes a big deal about Joe being the `American Ninja' but no one mentions that Senior Ortega only hires Phillipino Ninjas. What's up with that ?

· `He Posses great SKILLS.'

· Happy, light-hearted music during the 'Romancing The Stone' moment when Joe cuts the Cornell's daughter's miniskirt.

· Ninja look over bush. Ninja look under bush.

· Joe hangs out with The Cornell's Daughter and the movie turns into an Irish Spring commercial few a few terrifying moments. Joe looks sincerely nervous, confused, and sexually frustrated during this awkward moment.

· `Have you ever heard of Nijistu, Sir ?...Well, according to witness testimony and evidence, this massacre was the work of Ninjas.'

· `Ninjas ?'

· `Yes, Sir.'

· Senior Ortega : The Frenchman ? Dude, come on ! Make up your mind !

· Joe does a great lazy-ass, pansy, salute and then 90-degree exit, stage left.

· `Date of Birth : Unknown... But at age 16 was sent to reform school for almost killing a man.' Now, wait a second. If you don't know when you were born, how can you tell when you are 16 ?

· `Construction crew found him in an island off the Pacific 6 years ago, knocked unconscious by an explosion where they were blasting a road threw the jungle.' Remember this quote. That means that all of the flashbacks to when Joe was a VERY pre-pubescent child, was only `6 years ago.' Ninja time-warp paradox.

· As is mentioned before, Senior Ortega, in a very Austin Powers moment, likes to describe his plans allowed in front of the Mr. Mijagi Guy.

· Color-cornated ninja running through the swing set of death traps.

· The chubby Army troop that Jackson leads in March is pretending to, but really isn't, mumbling any type of military drill march.

· `We left all the glory boys in Vietnam.'

· `Ain't this a bitch ? I've been instructing martial arts in the Army for many years now.....'

· When Jackson presses Joe about his kung-fu origins, Joe answers that, `It's a long story.' He then proceeds to describe that `long story' in 4 sentences : 13 seconds flat.

· `I knew I touched something again.'

· Joe gives Jackson a manly head-nuggie in a very Top Gun oily-bicep moment.

· Charlie asks Joe how he plans to get off the base without the MP's noticing and Joe is like, `Well, check out that huge ramp that someone conveniently left right next to that wall.' Whomever was Dudikoff's stunt double that day earned their pay the hard way. Watch that landing in slow motion and try not to cringe. Our friend, the horn, is also back with a vengeance.

· Senior Ortega feels not only comfortable explaining his plans aloud to the Mr. Mijiagi Guy, but also in giving assignation commands in front of his waiter.

· Just as Joe's commanding officers don't know his name or rank, Joe never has to identify himself when showing up for duty.

· When hosting Saturday Night Live, John Goodman had this great `Ninja Community Collage' skit where he tried unsuccessfully to train his class of ninja to attack their enemy all at once, instead of one at a time. They even sampled clips from `American Ninja 3'. Only after viewing this movie a few times over can you appreciate the brilliant humor of that skit.

· Ninja in a box !

· In the Indian Jones / Lethal Weapon / Cape Fear moment, Joe hides under the truck. From his vantage point, you can see that as they pull into the warehouse that the driveway is empty. In the next shot there are 4 ninja (3 left : 1 right) standing in the driveway.

· Bonus points if you catch the Black Star Ninja's bald spot !

· The Ambushed guard is very obedient when Joe stuffs him into a barrel.

· Just as the are random ramps around the base, there are also random ladders next to the barbed wire fences of the stockade.

· When caught in an arm lock, Joe just kind of blows off the Black Star Ninja.

· ½ hour later, Jackson signals Joe in the motor pool with his truck's headlights.even though Joe is only a few feet off-stage to our left.

· `You gotta trust somebody, sometime !'

· Jackson drop kicks one dude's rifle then throws down a great , `Peace !....never mind.' sign.

· The Segarant's exploding car. Like a Pinto in heat.

· `Without this shipment, this county will fall to the Communists !'

· Bonus points if you can spot the Cornell's bald spot.

· Close your eyes and listen to Joe kick people in the nuts.

· The Mr. Mijagi Guy pops up again and we have a flashback back to `when I was 6' which, according to the previous information, was `6 years ago.' Which means that Joe is now 12 years old and in the Army because `at age 16 he was sent to reform school for almost killing a man.' Ninja time warp paradox.

· `Beware the Black Star Ninja. He just saw Jedi last night for the 15th time and is biting it's plot, big time.'

· As mentioned before, we are in store for a great massacre royal. Every extra gives performances above and beyond the call of duty, but honorable mention does go out to :

· 2nd person that Jackson shoots on balcony who drops his weapon and climbs FORWARD, over balcony.

· Dude who suddenly appears on the hood of Jackson's jeep than just as suddenly pushes himself off.

· Guy in the corner of the roof who throws his hands up in the air and waves them just like he just don't care.

· Ninja flamethrower ! Ninja wrist machine gun ! Ninja laser !

· Joe jumps onto a real helicopter with a front rail. Later, a toy model helicopter with no front rail is blown up by Jackson.

· Like I said, this is a priceless movie filled with many a beautiful moment, only a few that I have shared with you here. Anyone who is serious about being a director/ editor should study this film intently for 72 hours and then write their own thesis. Myself, I pledge to you, the good people of the imdb.com board, that when I become Quinten Tarinatino famous (or at least Kevin Smith successful) to hunt down and employ Michael Dudikoff in a cameo role in EVERY SINGLE one of my big-budget films. It's the least that we owe him for his contribution to our art form.

· Strength and honor -

· Bolger.

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.

I have seen cheesy kung fu fight films. Living in Taiwan they come on in lieu of sitcoms in America. I have seen movies make fun of themselves, but this film belongs in the sad category of fight films that try too hard with awful actors, awful props, and awful music to be taken seriously. I seriously felt pity for the person who composed the music for this movie. How sad it must be to be a composer who has to churn out crap like what I thought should have been titled "Generic Ninja Fight Scene, Op. 1" or "Variations on A Bad Guy Pointing a Gun at a Girl's Head When Backed into a Corner" or the daring "Flight of the Helicopter". Then the fight scenes were over and the credits rolled. Those actually had me in tears laughing. If the "special effects" weren't proof enough that this was low-budget, the fact that only two or three of the crew members, presumably locals which although good for the much-needed Phillipino economy was probably done solely to save money, have ever done anything since this series of movies. They rented equipment, despite making sequels to this movie. That was pretty funny too. The thing that really had me going though, was not the music (which left me half expecting an animated Sargeant Slaughter from G.I. Joe to pop up), but the ending...I suppose this would be a spoiler if there was really a plot to spoil, but when the American Ninja drops the girl into Jackson's arms and then takes off his mask, I wanted to see him jump off the roof and Jackson drop the girl to catch him.

I think that would have been the perfect punchline for this joke of a movie.

American Ninja is the definition of a cult favourite. It reeks of the 80's (which I love) and I've never really spent any time with Kung Fu films but I have a feeling it definitely channels that demographic of film. American Ninja was a theatrical release back in 1985 and when you watch it now you wonder how that is even possible. Something like this would never make it theatrically nowadays. American Ninja is everything that makes a bad movie so great. Ridiculous stunts, overacting, underacting, and a main cast that THINK they are so bad-ass and completely serious about these roles that you inadvertently find yourself loving every minute of it and investing yourself in these ridiculous macho heroes. The American Ninja series has been on my to watch list for years. Now that I have some extra time on my hands I started it and it was everything I expected it to be. The stunts and special effects are borderline terrible and yet they're doing the best they can with what they're given. The sub-plot of the mysterious origin of "Joe Armstrong" is sort of silly and unnecessary but I get they're trying to make this as serious as they can and that isn't easy.

What can you really say about Michael Dudikoff? He never made it to A-Lister and hardly is a B-Lister. He had no martial arts training at all going into this film which makes him an odd choice. Somehow he's watchable but mostly for morbid curiosity sake. He is so bland and trying so hard to be brooding and serious. He's so bad that he is perfect in this movie. Steve James is awesome. What else can I say? Like Dudikoff, he is awful. He acts bad but he is so high energy and so much more charisma than Dudikoff. They work together though but James is just train-wreck enough to not be able to not like! Judie Aronson is the romantic interest and she is okay but she is there for a single purpose and does that decently. John Fujioka is Dudikoff's mentor and he is quite good but a very small role without a lot of screen time. Don Stewart is an "okay" villain but this movie desperately needed a really bad-ass villain considering its an 80's action movie.

Sam Firstenberg is an expert at this type of movie. His directorial list is a what's what of silly absurd B-Films that I have no doubt he thinks were fantastic. His direction isn't terrible and like I said earlier this might be the perfect homage to the Kung Fu Genre. The story isn't bad, in fact, its simple and straight forward with plenty of action even if that action is ridiculous. This type of film is a whole genre in itself and you have to respect it for that. If you're someone who gets together with friends and watches and the worst of the worst and has a great time doing it then American Ninja should be HIGH on your list. I intend on making my way through all five of these (although five apparently has nothing to do with the first four despite having a returning actor who changes characters...fantastic!) This series is one to watch and just laugh. 7/10

This film comes straight from the 80's action mould. And not the good mould that Top Gun came out of.

The loner with no memory but super ninjistu skills and his army buddies face off against generic European bad guys and Black Star Ninjas.

The good guys win, the girl falls for the guy and everybody lives happily ever after except the non American ninjas and the Sensei of the good ninja.

The fact this spawned four sequels must have been part of some tax dodge by the producers.

If you are looking for an action film from 1985, give Rambo First Blood Part 2 a look before you watch this.

Featured on Episode 55 of The Emerald Reprobates Podcast