American Ninja (1985)

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Michael Dudikoff stars in the first entry of the semi-successful and awfully cheap series from the good folks at Cannon Studios.

Dudikoff plays Joe Armstrong, a mopey private in the Army whose first day on a convoy sees it attacked by ninjas. The convoy also happened to be carrying the Colonel Hickok's (Guich Koock) daughter Patricia (Judie Aronson), and Joe saves her and together they construct a tiny mountain of sexual tension. Joe is blamed for the deaths of some fellow soldiers in the attack, and gets in a fight with Jackson (Steve James), eventually winning his respect by kicking his butt. The villainous Ortega (Don Stewart) was trying to steal a missile launcher from the Army with the help of crooked sergeant Rinaldo (John LaMotta), Patricia's dad, and a whole mess of ninjas that Ortega has in his private ninja army training facility located at his estate. The rest of the film consists of Joe escaping and getting recaptured by both sides, until Ortega's gardener Shinyuki (John Fujioka), who happened to train Joe as a kid, reappears to help his former student kick more ninja butt.

I grew up the son of a military officer. If I had a nickel for every time I rode with a military convoy, got kidnapped by ninjas, heard Dad refer to himself as "THE Colonel," involved myself in base affairs, fell for a female non-commissioned officer, or lived in a base home the size of the White House, I would still be flat broke. Judie Aronson starts out even more annoying than damsel-in-distress Kate Capshaw in the second Indiana Jones film, but she eventually calms down to a tolerable whiny level. Michael Dudikoff is all handsome looks and no performance, although this kind of role does not require any acting ability. I have not seen this many shaggy haired extras pretending to be in the military since "WarGames." The writers obviously figured the explosive ninja action would cover up any logical mistakes- like why the opening convoy was attacked in the first place.

"American Ninja" cost nothing to produce, and amounts to nothing when watched. I could go on about the lack of acting, Sam Firstenberg's pedestrian direction, and the fact that this is paced like a very special two-part "The A-Team," but why? Watching "American Ninja" is as painful as sitting on a throwing star. Ooooh, sequels await!

Stats:
(1985) 95 min. (1/2 *) out of five stars
-Directed by Sam Firstenberg
-Screenplay by Paul De Mielche, Story by Avi Kleinberger & Gideon Amir
-Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Judie Aronson, Steve James, Don Stewart, John LaMotta, Guich Koock, John Fujioka, Tadashi Yamashita, Phillip Brock, Tony Carreon, Roi Vinzon, Richard Norton, Joey Galvez
(R)