American Ninja (1985) // 2022 revisit

I couldn't tell you how many times I watched these AN movies as a kid in the 80s and an action-obsessed teenager in the 90s. I gobbled these things up. They were on cable all the time. Cannon Films were just the shit for someone like me who could tear through a bunch of their action movies during a weekend. Now, saying that, this series is little interested in complexities of plot and more focused on throwing a bunch of stuntmen in ninja costumes so they can be obliterated and other stuntmen in Army uniforms for them to be annihilated by ninja. Dudikoff, of course, plants his own flag in the martial arts action era, sort of taking the scraps left behind by Norris when he wasn't interested. He has the stone face, "steely resolve", "man of few words", that go-to-work attitude when challenged by any number of a weapons dealer's compound of trained assassins in different colored ninja costumes. And all the toys are at Dudikoff's disposal, plucked from dead ninjas he cuts a swath through. Opposing Dudikoff's Army newbie ("Either prison or the military, bud, take your pick!") is dealer Ortega's (Don Stewart) main heavy, Five Star Ninja Master, Yamashita. Yamashita has that scowl and take-no-shit-from-nobody face on point. It would seem only Dudikoff has much of a prayer against Yamashita, since Dudikoff was trained by Fujioka as a child, that martial arts training very useful and instinctive...Dudikoff can just defend himself and move really fast when great speed, agility, and concentration, making it all look easy. Well, Dudikoff, obviously, benefits much like Franco Nero did in "Enter the Ninja" by having a double dressed as a ninja at the end do a lot of the stunts. There is also a badass motorcycle stunt where the stuntman's wig portraying Dudikoff is hilarious.

I do think they cover for Dudikoff well and he appears to have received enough help through editing and trained choreography to pass himself off as this chill human weapon. But poor guy gets blown off the screen by Steve James who is so fucking effortlessly cool. That guy just oozes charisma...it can't be said enough by so many of us that James shows up immediately commanding the screen. He had that It factor for sure. Dude had that physique, bandanna (hell fucking yea!), and machine gun loaded and ready to blow dirtbags away.

The plot has the colonel and sergeant in the Army associated criminally with Ortega, so few good guys in the leads! Judie Aronson (one of those gorgeous Jason victims in "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter") is the colonel's daughter in constant peril.

Oh and this wouldn't be an 80s action film without a fruit stand and street seller getting mowed over during a high speed chase.

I never watch these for anything else besides the silly action heroics, ninja and weapon choreography, and James doing what he does better than anybody else. Lots of noise, explosions, stabby-stab, and dead bodies. My kinda movie.