While I don’t want to sound like something of an action snob, the news that many American Ninja fans utterly despise the third installment came as something of a surprise. For a start, I was genuinely unaware that the American Ninja series actually had fans who cared that deeply, but then, as I’m an ardent Friday the 13th fan who can totally tell the difference when the actor behind Jason’s hokey mask changes, maybe I need to check my ninja-related prejudice at the door…
Anyway, the reason for all the fan anger is that franchise lead, Michael Dudikoff, is nowhere to be seen in this third installment as he didn’t want to film in the South African locations due to being firmly against the apartheid movement while also not wanting to be typecast in ninja-themed actions movies (a bit late for that, Mike), but the powers that be simply kept the series going with an entirely new lead played by the appropriately buff and limber David Bradley.
You wouldn’t think that this would be such an issue (and honestly, from the outside looking in, it isn’t), but as action cinema progressed in leaps in bounds, the American Ninja series felt trapped in simpler, more childish times.
Unraveling the plot for American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt often feels like trying to decipher the incoherent babbling of a particularly chatty baby, but as I have valuable column space to fill, I suppose I’d better take the best swing at it I can.
Back in 1979, a young Sean Davidson patiently waits in the audience for his father to perform in a martial arts tournament, but after the box office is raided by the team of the deadly terrorist mastermind known as The Cobra and his impatient underling, Andreas, the Davidson patriarch is drilled by panicked bullets while his horrified son watches on.
However, every cloud has a silver lining (I guess) and young Sean is raised by his father’s trainer, Izumo, who also just happens to be a master in the mysterious arts of ninjitsu and by the time he reaches adulthood, Sean is absurdly talented at whupping ass. However, following in his father’s footsteps by fighting in tournaments, Sean unwittingly ends up crossing paths with the Cobra once again who has noticably super-sized his organisation from his days of sticking up sports arenas. Now owning his own island and installing Andreas as a puppet leader, his nefarious desire to create a super human using biological viruses (or something) means he needs to find a perfect fighter to test it on, hence why he’s invited the world’s most proficient fighters to his doorstep.
Selecting Sean as his chosen subject, he immensely orders his master kidnapped, but soon it becomes apparent that nothing is what it seems when the deadly ninja are involved. Thankfully, he has American Ninja stalwart Curtis Jackson on call to help out – oh, and perpetual third wheel named Dexter who continuously describes himself as a ladies man despite the fact that he dresses like Guy Pearce in the Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert…
Maybe I’m just not that attuned to the “subtle nuances” of the American Ninja franchise, but the noticable lack of Dudikoff isn’t really that noticable in the grand scheme of things, especially considering that David Bradley is visibly a more accomplished martial artist than his predecessor (not hard considering Dudikoff had no fight training prior to American Ninja). I mean, he may lack that curious, thousand yard stare that Dudikoff “gifted” Joe Armstrong with, but Bradley attempts to compensate by sweating a lot and looking confused.
It’s a look that’ll no doubt also be gracing the faces of anyone who attempts to take the plot even remotely seriously as the script seemingly has no idea how to string any threads together. A lot happens in this movie, and yet somehow almost all of it has no bearing on how things turn out due to a near unbroken parade of pointless rug pulls and confounding red herrings that ultimately means that nothing that occurs is of any real circumstance whatsoever.
The Cobra – a drug dealing terrorist who somehow has funded his massive criminal empire by masterminding numerous accounts of petty theft – holds the martial arts tournament in the first place in order to find a “super human”, but doesn’t even wait to see who wins it before choosing his victim. Similarly, I’m not entirely sure what the villain is actually trying to achieve as his plan has something to do with biological terrorism, but I’m unaware what this has to do with owning a ninja army or pretending to kidnap Sean’s master. Yep, that’s right, I said pretending to kidnap, as the abduction of Izumo proves to be a massive fake out due to the fact that ninja leader Chan Lee is also a master of disguise and Sean hasn’t got the common sense to make a simple phone call in order to straighten things out. Speaking of Chan Lee; despite happily agreeing to work for an established drug lord and apparently being fine with kidnapping and bioterrorism, she inexplicably switches sides halfway through the movie, claiming that she only just realised that her boss was evil despite the fact that he runs about the place calling himself “The Cobra“.
Even the fact that Sean’s father was killed ten years prior by the Cobra’s henchman – a man who looks like the illegitimate love child of Donald Pleasance and Lee Van Cleef – goes absolutely nowhere as at no point during the film does either man (or the movie) openly acknowledge that they even recognise one another. Even a random action sequence that has our heroes buzzing around on microlites is yet another sequence that goes absolutely nowhere and the effect of all these plot points that end up having zero effect is ultimately rather numbing.
Thankfully, keeping the American Ninja flag flying is the return of the late Steve James as the abnormally vigorous Curtis “Powerhouse” Jackson who enters the movie dressed in a cowboy hat and a sleeveless shirt that bares the legend “Shalom Y’all” and then gets more hilariously dynamic from there. Strutting through proceedings with all the confidence of a man who has never needed to fully button a shirt in his life he hilariously bellows “DIE!” at a recently disembowled enemy who takes too long to fall over and offhandly refers to Chan Lee as “Ninjette” whenever he can.
Still, in a year that saw the release of such movies as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman and Lethal Weapon 2, its quite overwhelming how childishly stupid Blood Hunt often is – if even the infuriatingly annoying Dex can successfully fight off a ninja whilst wearing what looks like a pink bowling shirt, then how badass can these ancient warriors possibly be?
Still, bad movie enthusiasts will delight at the goofy action that includes Sean fighting off a couple of assasins while underwater and Curtis throwing trained killers around like ragdolls, but I have to agree with the general consensus – Ninja, vanish. Please.
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