When the third chapter of Cannon’s endearingly infantile American Ninja series somersaulted into theatres, devout fans of the franchise were horrified when the lead actor, Michael Dudikoff, decided not to be in the film – I know, I was shocked too; American Ninja has devout fans?
Anyway, unnecessary cheap shots aside, while American Ninja 3 eventually found its audience within the community of lovers of ridiculous, cheesy action flicks, the feeling of the time was Dudikoff: forever, David Bradley: never. However, while the fans were right to support their boy, Dudikoff, the simple fact remained that Bradley was a far better martial artist.
If only there was a way to fuse the – do I say “star power” of American Ninja’s original hero with the high-kicking prowess of the third movie’s pretender? Wait, what am talking about, of course there’s a way! Corporate synergy, baby!
Delving deep into the Cannon Group sack of nefarious supervillain plots, we find that Muslim militant Shiekh Ali Maksood has joined with Colonal Scarf Mulgrew, an American hating ex-British policeman to concoct a dastardly plan to smuggle a Suitcase Nuke into New York. In retaliation, a Delta Force unit has been sent in to sort this mess out, only to run into Maksood’s sizable Ninja army and those who aren’t sliced into ribbons or riddled with arrows are captured to be executed at a later date.
If a 50 million dollar ransom isn’t paid, Maksood will unleash the bomb and burn the commandos at the stake, so the American government have no choice but to go to their second, last hope – Agent Sean Davidson. By the way if you’re wondering who their first last hope was, Joe Armstrong – the original American Ninja – is now a teacher with the Peace Corps and understandably wants to put his endless wars with countless ninja thugs firmly in his rear view.
However, despite the best efforts of Sean and his sidekick/partner, Carl, our replacement hero is eventually captured by the ninja army and find themselves being taunted by Mulgrew which means that our original last hope becomes our actual last hope and Joe Armstrong finally comes out of retirement to make injure some ninja. However, whe won’t be doing it alone as he enlists the help of a local rebel group who’ve named themselves the Sulfur Springs and who live like the gang from Max Max 2.
As the final battle looms, Joe has to eradicate ninja like never before if he’s going to save the assorted prisoners and bring Maksood and Mulgrew’s unspeakable plan crashing down around their ears.
The more I watch these movies, the more I find it impossible to believe that these things are actually made by fully functioning adults – too violent for kids, yet horribly childish compared to some of the other action films being released at the time – and yet even I have to agree that there is something bizarrely endearing and innocent about these bone-headed epics, even if part 4’s villain is a spectacularly cartoonish Arabian type who bellows “INFIDEL!!” during stressful moments and visibly gets off on the idea of almost setting off his nukes on the off chance of meeting Allah face to face.
The movie solves the two American Ninjas issue as ungainly and clumsily as you’d expect by having the first half of the film focusing on Bradley’s Sean doing his best to save the day by preparing for battle by doing the splits in front of his bow and arrow and roundhouse kicking his bloody heart out. But as the “lesser” of the two heroes, he’s doomed to be captured in order for Dudikoff’s Armstrong to launch out of retirement like a greyhound out of a trap and bail everyone out 44 minutes into the film. While it would certainly have made more sense for the two martial artists to team up right from the off, rumours persist that Dudikoff would only do the film if he was portrayed as the more heroic hero of the two. Thus the dueling leads barely spend more time together on the poster than they do on screen and a face/off between the two is revealed as a fake out when a suddenly “evil” Sean is revealed to be a ninja in a rubber mask.
As a result, Armstrong gets to do the cooler shit and while all this shifty Hollywood-type stuff is techincally unfair, it’s always perversely fun watching stuntmen in ill-fitting ninja costumes get utterly destroyed by Dudikoff’s particular style of stiff-limbed fighting. In fact, the movie dials up his inhuman levels of kick-assery to such a degree that its frankly hilarious – watch as he instantly changes from white t-shirt and jeans into his ninja garb like a low rent magician; thrill as he removes a pesky assasin from the bonnet of his ghastly getaway car by punching him him the chops through the windscreen; stifle giggles as a restrained Armstrong catches crossbow bolt in his teeth and stabs it into the neck one of the goons holding him. However, the absence of franchise stalwart and nexus of charisma, Steve James is keenly felt as he had more personality in the follicles on his head than both of the actual stars combined and the actor tragically passed away two years later.
However, adding to the fact that the movie strives to be as gritty and restrained as a Roadrunner cartoon, Zulu actor James Booth swings for the fences as the evil hench-villain, Mulgrew. We know he’s evil because he strides around, smearing a leather jacket in topical heat and sports the sort of sunglasses pensioners use to help with their glaucoma while rasping out such dialogue as “Don’t you make me lose my bloody temper, you arsehole!” and sweetly referring to Sean as “You American fuck”. Simply put, he looks less like a global threat and more like a grumpy old fart who yells at the neighbourhood kids for playing on his lawn, but he’s still a blustering, ranting lump of villainy in an increasing stupid flick.
Exactly how stupid American Ninja 4: Annihilation is should be apparent by now in a franchise that constantly insists that ninjas are the be-all and end-all of bad-assery, only to have dozens of the masked bastards slain every twenty minutes, even by people without martial arts training (during the climatic battle, one of the rebels charges in to fight waving a fucking saucepan). But in a wonky, 80s scrolling beat ’em up sort of way, even something as stupid as this can be oddly reassuring and if nothing else, it’s cool to see Dudikoff rocking a yellow ninja suit a good four years before Scorpion uttered his first “get over here” in the orginal Mortal Kombat.
In a world of Die Hards, Fast & Furiouses and John Wicks, the fourth outing of American Ninja looks horribly quaint, but you can’t fault the idiotic energy of a movie that names its henchman “SuperNinja” without the slightest shred of irony.
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