If I’m perfectly honest, I repeat watch these American Ninja
films because of the late, great Steve James. He never appears as if he isn’t
anything but authentic as a fighter and overall badass. And he quips with the
best of any action hero. Always listed as “co-star”, I think it is a shame
James never got the treatment of a James Brown or Fred Williamson. While
Michael Dudikoff dutifully remains absent a personality, James makes up for his
shortcomings with loads of charisma and charm. And he was fucking built like a
mack truck. There is this hilarious fight scene where James whips out these
massive cleaver-like swords clearly echoing, “My swords are bigger than yours”.
The plot is nonsensical gibberish: a kingpin, The Lion (Conway), has forced a
scientist, Professor Sanborne (Draper), on the verge of a cancer breakthrough,
using his daughter’s (Botes) safety as leverage, to create genetically enhanced
super ninja on a Caribbean island. Marines assigned to an Embassy (Jeff
Celentano, in charge, nicknamed “Wild Bill”) are going missing, and two Army
Rangers (Dudikoff and James) soon arrive to investigate what is going on,
eventually linking the kidnappings to The Lion. The film essentially is an
excuse to costume stuntmen in ninja garb with ninja weapons, sort of Star Trek
Red Suits, as they are fed to Dudikoff and James. You get plenty of sound
effects emphasizing snapped bones and necks, body pounding by blows and the
ground (when hurled in the air until they flip or fly to surface), and sword
slicing (the film even provides throwing stars, arrows from bows, and tube
spikes spit from mouths). The violence is relatively bloodless, the fight
choreography carefully edited, and the steady stream of ninjas annihilated laughable
in their inability to exhaust James and Dudikoff much less hurt them much. It
is like an assembly line of ninjas just thrown at Dudikoff and James (Dudikoff,
especially) as they are discarded with relative ease. On top of all the ninjas
Dudikoff and James obliterate, there are tavern grunts in dirty shirts and
faces fit for breaking bar tables and windows (the western barfight wasn’t
retired as long as Chuck Norris and 80s action movies kept being churned out).
Action junkies like me, who basically went through as many as hit VHS rental
store shelves like the American Ninja films in the early 90s, are more
forgiving of the endless clichés and cyclical plots, if the choreography is of
any consequence. While the editing and use of stunt doubles helps the heroes
just mow down anyone in their path, it just seemed like all that was often
necessary to satisfy us was seeing spinning kicks and punches flogging
nondescript goofs, supposedly skilled in the martial arts although being dispatched
with relative ease would indicate that they perhaps needed more training. I
think the problem against these American Ninja flicks is that the lack of blood
and protruding bones (and mangled flesh) kind of denies certain fans their
viscera. Let’s be honest, here: “American Ninja II: The Confrontation” (1987)
isn’t a title just anyone will pick out of a lineup on a shelf at a store and
rent for entertainment. You kinda know what you getting into. 2.5/5
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