American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987)

PLOT: When Marines go missing from a military base in the Caribbean, two Army Rangers are brought in as reinforcements. Before they can help in the investigation, however, they must plaster the neighborhood with "LOST MARINES" posters and raise enough money for a $10,000 reward to incentivize the local population.

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writers: Gary Conway, James Booth
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Larry Poindexter, Michelle Botes, Gary Conway, Jeff Celentano, Mike Stone, Ralph Draper

PLOT THICKENER
When I publicly acknowledged in my review of the first American Ninja movie that the entire series was a shameful blind spot, it felt as if a huge Dudikoff-sized weight had been lifted off my chest. Without any fears of sentimentality coloring my critique, I could enjoy these classic films on their own merits: the limp grasp of ninja mythology, the whiteboy-in-Eastern-philosophy adventuring, the frequent fight scenes, and the lasers -- my god, the lasers. I was apprehensive, still; to break the seal of reviewing the first film was daunting considering the sequels to come. As a general cinematic rule, sequels tend to diminish in quality, but as evidenced by franchises like No Retreat, No Surrender and Ring of Fire, that rule goes out the window with martial arts b-movies. More accurately, it gets jump-kicked through the window during a bar fight.

In this case, on the other side of that newly broken window is Steve James, and he's laughing and flexing all the while. Returning to the fray as Army Ranger Sgt. Curtis Jackson, he and Sgt. Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) have recently been assigned to a Marine base to help protect the American embassy on an island in the Caribbean. Life is good for the local Marines. They surf, chase girls, get hammered, and due to some anti-American elements on the island, must rock Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts instead of their standard uniforms to blend in. Even the base's brash commanding officer, Capt. "Wild Bill" Woodward (Celentano) is dressed for a Jimmy Buffett concert.

Because of his culturally appropriated ninja-sense, Armstrong knows something is fishy right off the bat, and it's not the local shrimp tacos. (Shrimp are technically decapod crustaceans, not fish). Jackson and Armstrong are first invited to go water-skiing by a few of the dudes from the base. Guess what? There's no fucking life jackets. The boat mysteriously breaks down and drifts ashore to an isolated island beach. The shifty Marine is all, "oh, how strange... let's go swimming everybody" and Armstrong says "I'm afraid of sharks, I'll stay with the boat." Within moments, he's attacked by a gang of ninjas who throw every manner of ninja  weapon cliche at him: the spears, the confounding net, the stars, the swords. Even while dressed in a three-quarter-length wetsuit and white cross-trainers instead of his normal ninja gear, Armstrong prevails and the gang makes it safely back to base.

Even though Woodward has no idea what ninjas are (how typical), he grants Armstrong and Jackson a week to investigate further. They have a hunch that these ninjas may be related to a spate of kidnappings of Marines. Really, Joe? You think the random beach ninjas, kidnapped Marines, and shifty Marine who ran the boat ashore and into a sabotage might be connected? As it turns out, all of these things were mere coincidences and the kidnapped Marines were actually just busy with a bunch of sex workers, the ninjas were a local indigenous culture hostile to outsiders, and the shifty Marine was actually just a terrible driver. Kidding! Joe was totally right. A local heroin kingpin called The Lion (Conway) has been using a kidnapped biological engineer to create an army of ninjas out of kidnapped Marine DNA to protect his vast drug empire. Do you see why pro-lifers are so concerned about stem cell research? This is the shit that happens.

After exploring some super-serious dramatic territory with the first American Ninja, it was interesting to see that director Sam Firstenberg could lighten the tone with the second installment. The movie is zany throughout, and pretty much everyone got the memo. Dudikoff seems a little detached -- there's only so many Blue Steel glares I can tolerate -- and he makes some odd wardrobe choices like a leather jacket and jeans tucked into his boots. (We're in the Caribbean, mind you). James pretty much steals the show once again as Sgt. Curtis Jackson, so no surprises there. Mike Stone is pretty enjoyable as Lion's main muscle, Tojo Ken, and his build-up as the most threatening physical match for the heroes is well done, if completely illogical. (During quality assurance testing, he kills about 20 of the gang's own GMO ninjas). Jeff Celentano is a little stiff as Capt. Woodward, but sports a fine moustache and owns the best line of the film: "What is this? Ninjas? Drug pushers? My men getting kidnapped and murdered? This is really beginning to get on my tits." It's funny, because he doesn't actually have tits. If he does, they're pretty small.

While the movie treads a lot of the same action territory as the first installment -- heroes get jumped by ninjas, defeat ninjas handily, rinse, repeat -- there are some distinct differences. The most egregious is that Michael Dudikoff looks pretty awful in his fight scenes. A successful fight scene, in this humble writer’s opinion, requires that the stuntman act as if he’s getting hit, but also that the principal act as if he’s hitting him. Dudikoff acts like an interpretive dancer trying to complete a field sobriety test after a dozen Pina Coladas. When he’s not flailing, or throwing a weak kick, he’s doing movements without any regard for how the stuntman is moving with him. I counted at least three instances where he “threw” an opponent despite having no grip whatsoever on them. None of this is helped by the fact that Steve James brings intensity to his fight scenes, is deliberate but not stilted in his movements, and genuinely appears to be having a good time beating up those around him. It would be easy to point the finger at Dudikoff as a non-martial artist, but I think blame should be laid at the feet of Sam Firstenberg. The Koff looked passable in the first film, so what changed? One has to assume that director was lazy with the coverage and was forced to edit his way out of it.

VERDICT
Let’s recount: decent fights, a silly story, mostly unremarkable characters, and a lead actor who I may forever refuse to embrace as a martial arts action star. When all the critical elements are sort of neutral, your film would appear to be dead in the water, but you can still win a ton of points on overall form and pacing. I ultimately enjoyed the breezy runtime because there was always *something* happening: either a fight scene, a ridiculous plot point that moved the story forward, or some display of dated fashion sense out of a modern Williamsburg farmers market. While this film seemed to signal Dudikoff's waning interest in the franchise, the rest of the crew picks up the slack. Solid.

AVAILABILITY
Wide and salty, like the Caribbean Sea. Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

4.5 / 7

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