Hey, remember back in the 80s when all you had to do to make your film cooler was to stick some freaking ninjas in it? Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus sure as shit did, because thanks to their endless crackpot ideas, they helped popularize the way of the ninja to marble-eyed 80s kids everywhere with their series of American Ninja films – oh that’s right, an American ninja; because if anything made anything cooler in the decade of leg warmers and shoulder pads, it was a spot of good natured cultural appropriation.
However, while it’s easy (and incredibly enjoyable) to make fun of a dated actioner from a bygone decade, the Cannon Group actually had to be commended for mixing things up a little and giving us a violent, goofy, romp that didn’t feature Chuck Norris causing an international incident or Charles Bronson squinting his way through yet another brutal thriller. It’s time to pull on you black jumpsuit and practice your forward rolls, as it’s time to practice the art of ninja magic.
Constantly brooding mystery man Joe Armstrong has found himself conscripted into the U.S. Army and stationed in the Philippines thanks to a shifty past – however, his antisocial glaring and closed-off nature is a result of a hefty dose of amnesia which renders his childhood a haze. His fellow soldiers understandably keep him at arms length as all he seems to do during his downtime is lean on trucks and idly fiddle with a butterfly knife, but during a delivery mission that sees a gang try to kidnap Patricia, the shrieking daughter of Colonal William Hickock, Joe shows that he possesses great skills when a bunch of assassins called the Black Star Ninja show up and he manages to fight them all off and save Patricia while using their own fighting style against them.
As Joe saves Patricia despite the fact that she simply won’t shut up, the master of the Black Star Ninja seems most disturbed that an American knows how to throw down with a style that’s only supposed to be known by the Japanese, but unbeknownst to everyone (including Joe), his forgotton childhood holds all the secrets.
Despite rescuing the Colonal’s daughter, Joe is despised even more by his fellow soldiers as it looks like his burst of heroism is what got his comrades slaughtered by arrows, throwing stars and various other pointy weapons, however, after initially singling Joe out for a spot of U.S. military bullying, the perminately oiled Corporal Curtis Jackson finally starts to realise that the intense Joe isn’t that bad of a guy after all. However, behind the ninja is the black marketer known as Ortega, and in league with him is certain members of the upper brass of the very military base Joe is based at. Framed at every turn and fighting off ninjas left and right, Joe has to use his skills to get to the bottom of this corruption by killing the living crap out of anyone wearing black.
By now, anyone who isn’t already familiar with the dubious pleasures of an action flick bankrolled by the endearingly hyperbolic Cannon Group is missing out on some prime 80s cheese as the onslaught of stilted acting, over the top violence and frenzied, unsubtle flag-waving provides a veritable smorgasbord of bad-movie related drinking games. To no one’s surprise, American Ninja is no different and is blatantly the result of Golan and Globus’ famous knee-jerk reactions that caused them to immediately try to capitalize on any fad that was currently sweeping the nation (let us never forget that they released two break dancing movies in the same year). And yet American Ninja wasn’t even Cannon’s first foray into all-black suits and clashing katanas with the impressively ridiculous Enter The Ninja trilogy, and yet despite some obvious glaring flaws, the adventures of Michael Dudikoff’s Joe Armstrong seem weirdly innocent and wholesome compared to some other examples of Cannon’s action catalogue.
For a start, there’s a refreshing lack of dated politics to be found as other Cannon jams would clumsily riff on solving hot political topics of the time like soaring crime stats (Death Wish II), POW’s still held in Vietnam (Missing In Action), or international hijacking (The Delta Force) by unleashing Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson upon them like vengeful, indestructible demigods. As a result, the plot feels about as involved and nuanced as the Coin-Op arcade game Double Dragon and yet there’s something weirdly endearing about the way the film is handled.
For a start, Dukakis’ Joe may “possess great skills”, but the actor plays him with all the warmth of a potential school shooter as he skulks around the military base fixing everyone with the cold, lifeless stare of a fully functioning serial killer. However, that doesn’t stop him from awkwardly dating the Colonal’s hot daughter after saving her from ninjas. However, Judie Aronson’s unfeasibly shrill Patricia proves to be one of those female leads who puts womankind back nearly fifty years, single handed thanks to the fact that she’s about as capable at defending herself as a mildewy shower curtain. However, despite Joe snapping off her heels, slicing her miniskirt skirt up to the crotch and throwing her into a leech-filled river with barely a word of explanation, the two crazy kids actually manage to hit it off despite having less chemistry than a couple of fire hydrants. Still, at least it’s more believable than Joe’s origin story, which, I shit you not, turns out that he was raised from birth by a Japanese holdout soldier and lost his memory until he lost his memory after wandering into the path of a explosion.
As the film progresses, those not familiar with the 80s Western style of staging martial arts scenes may wonder why the action is stiffly staged an broken. Up. Into. A. Bunch. Of. Little. Edits. But the simple fact was America was still light years away from what was being accomplished by the likes of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung in Hong Kong at that very moment, but that doesn’t mean that the sight of ninjas constantly flipping into frame by the use of a barely hidden trampoline doesn’t prove to be fun in it’s own, throwback, sort of way.
In fact, kids back in 1985 probably went out of their fucking minds for this stuff as the movie ladles on the ninja stuff and puffed up patriotism with childish glee with ear ache inducing bugle solos all over the soundtrack. As a result, the dated, goofy tropes are legion; I swear to god, a jeep containing a screaming villain explodes after hitting a tree despite only going about 15 mph at the time of impact, Jackson eliminates and escaping villain by utilizing the world’s most complicated looking bazooka (it’s just a normal bazooka with wires and part of a shopping basket glued to it) and we’re supposed to believe that a ninja can suddenly appear in the middle of an expanse of grass surrounded by witnesses simply because he’s thrown a smoke pellet down.
Like most of Cannon’s ouput, the more you treat American Ninja like a comedy, the better off you’ll be, but it’s a fun relic of a time when America could unironically insist it was the in the world at everything – even ancient, secret fighting styles from Japan…
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