9.19.2011

American Ninja (1985)

PLOT: Long before haughty military leaders were up in arms about gays serving openly in the military, they were up in arms about amnesic American ninjas serving openly in the military.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writers: Paul De Mielche, Avi Kleinberger, Gideon Amir, James R. Silke
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Tadashi Yamashita, Judie Aronson, Guich Koock, Don Stewart, Nick Nicholson


PLOT THICKENER:
This space is a little over a year old and I’ve yet to make any Internet enemies, so I’ve resorted to inventing detractors in my head. These medieval dickweeds often pose the question: how can you dedicate your content to Western martial arts b-films and not cover American Ninja? I’ll admit that ignoring it up to this point was a conscious choice. We try to cover movies wallowing in straight-to-video obscurity, not a Cannon Films picture that scored $3.2 million in its opening weekend. Our preference is for real martial artists giving the acting thing a go, not a model-turned-actor who had no real martial arts credits prior to filming. Last, I may have ignored it on a subconscious level out of pure shame. Before watching it for this review, I’d never even seen American Ninja. What’s that high-pitched wheeze? Oh, right: the sound of my tattered Internet credibility disappearing into the ether.

After a string of small parts in films like Bloody Birthday and Bachelor Party, Michael Dudikoff was handed the ball for American Ninja and told to run with it. (Secretly and under the cover of smokebombs, of course; this was a ninja movie). Ninjas had done some Entering and Revenging at the box office, but never American-style, and Dudikoff was the handsome (white) devil of Cannon Films producers’ dreams. He plays Army Private Joe Armstrong, a soft-spoken amnesic military truck driver stationed in the Philippines who has a penchant for effortlessly beating the shit out of people. That’s right. Without American Ninja, there would be no Jason Bourne films. Ignore the fact that The Bourne Identity novel was written in 1980, and that quip is a lot funnier.


During an ambush on his unit that leaves several fellow soldiers dead, Armstrong survives using a mix of unique fighting skills (punching) and improvisation (a screwdriver and tire iron) to fight off a group of ninja attackers. Instead of getting the hero’s treatment for saving the daughter of Col. Hickock (Koock), Armstrong is reprimanded and shunned by the entire base. They all seem to think his aggression caused a lot of unnecessary deaths. Armstrong seems to think that being a giant pussy is no way to act around ninjas.

Tough-as-nails corporal and fighting expert Curtis Jackson (James) wants to make an example out of Armstrong because no one likes a “glory boy” when it comes at the cost of teamwork. Instead, Jackson gets his ass handed to him in front of his peers and underlings. He’s not so much embarrassed or angry as he is curious about where Armstrong picked up such advanced skills, and they become pals. Theirs is the latest in a long line of action movie friendships forged during the act of trying to beat the piss out of each other.


Armstrong is going to need all the help he can get, because he stumbles upon a devious arrangement between the local American military leadership and a black market arms dealer named Ortega (Stewart) that could blow the roof off the establishment. In order to get the guilty parties, he’ll have to go through an army of ninjas led by Ortega’s main hatchet man, Black Star Ninja (Yamashita). No one actually calls him this by name, but he has a cute little black star tattoo on his face. Could have been a birthmark or a mole, I don’t fucking know.


American Ninja is definitely a movie I would have loved as a nine year-old burgeoning martial arts student. Which is not to say you can’t dig this as an adult, because the action moves at a great clip and the ninja-heavy climax cuts loose and properly zany. Brandishing more than two screenwriters is usually a clue that the resulting film will be a fucking mess, but unlike a lot of other projects with a Frankenstein crew of scribes, it manages to keep its head above water for the most part.

In what amounts to his first real leading role, Dudikoff is reasonably OK. He doesn’t bring much charisma, has little emotional conviction in his line delivery, and is a neutral element in some otherwise entertaining fight scenes. I don’t doubt that he honed his craft and improved over the course of the franchise and his career, but he doesn’t do enough on either the action or dramatic fronts to carry the film, nor is he bad enough to be laughably entertaining. The real star of this affair is Steve James -- the man is an absolute bad-ass and unlike the fresh-faced Dudikoff, he looks the part. Fortunately, he supplies enough personality and screen presence for the both of them. And of course, by personality and screen presence, I mean an awesome “helicopter explosion by way of rocket launcher” scene.


One other note: Judie Aronson plays Patricia, Armstrong’s love interest and the Colonel’s daughter. As I did, a lot of people will remember her from Weird Science as Hilly, the eventual love interest of Wyatt Donnelly. That film featured prominently in my youth, and I thought it was important to mention that even as an kid, I thought she was the hottest chick in that entire film, which is a little odd because the whole point of the movie is to give you a giant hard-on for Kelly LeBrock and her cosmic abilities and sexy outfits. Also, Steve James had an uncredited role in Weird Science. How’s that for some full circle shit?


VERDICT:
American Ninja ranks very favorably in the canon of 1980s American action films. No one in their right mind is going to confuse Michael Dudikoff for Sho Kosugi or even Leo Fong in terms of actual martial arts skills, but the filmmakers manage to hide his lack of training through a delicate balance of pace, editing, and absurdity. Might this have been a better action effort with a young Jean Claude Van Damme in the lead role? Perhaps, but the world wasn’t quite ready for American Ninja with a Belgian Accent.

AVAILABILITY:
Wide and large.

6 / 7

6 comments:

  1. Excellent review! Haha, Love the Black Star Ninja driver's license.

    Also Steve James was great and it was nice to see Richard Norton in this for a minute.

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  2. This one is OK but Part 2 is a big step up in terms of action, cheesiness, and overall entertainment value. I think you'll have fun with that one.

    Also, I met Anthony Michael Hall this weekend and we talked about his drunk scene in Weird Science. He said that the voice he used was inspired by Richard Pryor's stand-up. I thought that was pretty cool. That scene is a classic. Having Steve James there just cements the fact.

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  3. You are absolutely killing me with the pics here, Buckethead and Black Star Ninja's driver's license (a donor -- who knew?) in particular.

    Being a young martial arts student way-back-when, I can confirm that this movie did indeed rock the proverbial socks off for me (even moreso with part deuce, as Video Vacuum pointed out). Can't watch Bachelor Party ever again without thinking about how Dudikoff is just a black-clad stuntman away from bringing down some stealth ownage to Hanks and company.

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  4. I'm glad you decided to give this a look. I too was hesitant to review it just because it was in the theater, but it's worth it-- plus, you gotta love Dudikoff.

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  5. @Ty - I totally whiffed on the Norton cameo! Did he get any lines or was it just a quick walk-on part?

    @thevideovacuum - AN2 will be in the mix at some point, so I'll look forward to that. I'm committed to the entire franchise now because the films are readily available and there's some overlap with David Bradley and I'd like to cover more of his work. Loved that scene from Weird Science as well, and in many ways Hall is the best part of the movie. Did you happen to ask him about Freddie Got Fingered? His inclusion in that was random, to say the least.

    @EFC - Glad to know that the Buckethead pic was not lost on everyone. It's an interesting time right now for martial arts because people from every age group are running into Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes because of the UFC effect. I'm not sure we'll see a set of films that inspires people to learn stand-up styles again, in the same way that Karate Kid, Bloodsport and their brethren did.

    @DtVC - I'm not there yet with Dudikoff, but I hope to be because he does have a look and presence about him. He seemed a little aloof here and I'm wondering if it had something do with his anxiety over his lack of martial arts experience in a movie that required him to act like an expert. I've always found it really strange that he gets lumped in with the Don Wilsons and Cynthia Rothrocks of the world when he didn't have the same background and didn't really do any m.a. flicks outside of this franchise. In any case, it was an entertaining flick, fighting experience or not.

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  6. Didn't get to talk to AMH about Freddy Got Fingered. Dropped the ball there. I think you'll have fun with the American Ninja sequels. They kinda rollercoaster in terms of quality, but the lows are just as funny as the highs.

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