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 Cho's family gets killed by a band of ninja so he "flees to America in the hope of building a new life." Once in America, he becomes "the pawn of a ruthless drug trafficker - an American Ninja intent on killing anyone who crosses his path." 1983, 90 minutes, DVD
Early on in this movie I was thinking that this Sho Kosugi guy wasn't much of an actor. With a bad haircut and a stupefied look on his face whenever he was required to grunt out admittedly dreadful dialogue, Sho seemed to be about as suited for the silver screen as his tall, beefy, co-star, Arthur Roberts, seemed to be suited for ninja duty. Then Sho went and disappeared from a good portion of the middle of the movie and as I watched director Sam Firstenberg (Ninja III: The Domination, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) parade a series of increasingly stiff corpses in front of the camera to spew forth lines that left you laughing out loud, I thought to myself that Sho was actually one of the best actors in the film. But then he had to go and spoil that thinking by showing up and standing around vowing vengeance for his grandmother's death and his son's disappearance in a scene with karate expert Keith Vitali that somehow manages to combine bad dialogue, bad acting, and bad staging such that Sho and Keith seemed to be taking some perverse pleasure in seeing who could look the least natural on screen.
Make no mistake, this movie stinks like a ninja suit after a day of hopping around on the hot rooftops of a Los Angeles that looks suspiciously like a much cheaper to shoot in Salt Lake City. At least this Los Angeles was a little lighter on the smog for those rooftop scenes and a little heavier on the mountains in the background. Salt Lake City's rather bungled attempt at portraying L.A. though is really the least laughable thing in this movie, as there were many times throughout that I felt like I was watching an extended skit from SCTV. From the stereotypical Italian mob boss, to the cops investigating the ninja-style murders plaguing their city, to the stupid blonde girl that Sho can't even be bothered to feign interest in - even when she shows up at his dojo wearing a little red robe and pantyhose, (Sho says to her that if she came for some training that she forgot her pants!) the movie is unable to keep you from giggling between the overlong and badly thought out fight scenes. It doesn't take years of study in the secretive ways of the ninja then to see that this DVD is must for every collection.
The movie doesn't waste any time on delivering some ninja action for you as we find ourselves in Japan at Cho's (Sho) ancestral home. An army of ninja appears and wipes his family out, taking pride in using a variety of ninja weapons to do in all of Cho's family members. The best one has to be the throwing star that Cho's young son takes to the head. But if you think that you somehow escaped having some little brat running around getting mixed up in the action, you need to realize that besides Cho and his grandmother, his other son was not killed by the invading ninja.
Cho comes back home with his buddy Braden who is nagging Cho to come over to America and help him open up a Japanese art gallery, when he sees all the carnage. Cho sort of scowls at all the bodies laying here and there with swords and arrows and shurikens sticking out of various body parts and then is beset by those dang ninja! A big fight ensues, marked mainly by how unstealthly these ninja are. They move slowly, standing around so that Cho can kick them, and not blending into the background very well since they dressed up in their black suits with red belts to attack people during the day time. Even worse for them is that Braden pulls out his gun and starts shooting ninja as they pop up on the rooftop like some kind of police academy target practice course.
Once all the ninja have been wiped out, Braden uses the opportunity to urge Cho to come to America where he can escape all this violence and raise his surviving son in peace. His grandma doesn't want to be left to clean up all the mess and tells Cho that he can't escape his karma. The text on the screen in the next scene tells us that it's six years later and we're over in America, so it's obvious that Cho decided to take Braden up on his offer. I wonder if he declared his bad karma at customs?
At this point in time, Sho has retired from the ninja game and has even wrapped a little white piece of paper around his sword to show that it will never be used again (you know - instead of just selling it), so all the ninja action is left to his now six-year-old son. Kane (played by Sho's real-life son Kane) is an impressive little bugger when it comes to taking ona gang of bullies older than he is and he gets his fair share of action sequences in this film, including a rather good showing against the dumb blonde that has been hypnotized by the evil ninja into trying to kidnap Kane (I told you that you were going to want this one in collection, didn't I?)
Sho is irked that Kane has used his ninja super powers to defend himself and reminds all of us that he is retired and just wants to concentrate on making sure the opening of the art gallery with that new shipment of dolls from Japan goes off without a hitch. As soon as grandma scrunches up her ugly face and says that she doesn't trust Braden, you know that there's drugs being smuggled in those dolls. It never made any sense to me why Braden would want or even need Cho's help in this doll business. Why align yourself with a goody-goody ninja when you could just import the dolls yourself and sell them? There's a plenty of people already in America who weren't the most powerful ninja ever that you could have hired to front your operation.
Braden though wouldn't necessarily demonstrate much mental acumen throughout the picture. He visits Italian mob boss, Chifano and demands his money for the drugs saying his Japanese partners want their cut now. Chifano says that he's not going to give it to him now and Braden gets mad and claims that his Japanese partners won't be happy and then leaves. Later on when he's using his hypnotizing powers on Cathy, you can't help but wonder why he didn't do the same on Chifano and get his money that way. Ahh, but the ways of the ninja are mysterious and often times don't make sense to those of us not trained in their ways. Besides, if Braden had done that, we wouldn't have gotten to see him get all dressed up in his ninja costume, complete with dopey silver mask whose eyes glow when he breaks out his hypnotizing powers!
Braden embarks on a rampage of terror, carrying his briefcase full of ninja weapons with him to places like the restroom in a public park (please, no comments about his nunchucks) where he changes into his costume and attacks one of Chifano's relatives who is using a urinal there. That may sound a bit ludicrous, but we all need to remember that the ninja are masters of a thousand deaths and with that many, one of them surely was "urinal attack." Braden also kills a one-eyed stool pigeon that Chifano uses, as well as uses a blow gun on Chifano's nephew and also kills his girlfriend while they're making out in a hot tub.
The police are baffled by these murders and karate cop David Hatcher (Vitali) is brought in to figure out what is happening. He goes to his friend Cho for help, but Cho whines about how he has a bunch of dolls he needs to get ready for the big gallery opening. But Chifano is getting irked that Braden is killing off his family members so he orders all the dolls stolen! Cho arrives in time to see this happen and gets embroiled in one of the longest fights you'll ever see in these types of movies. Two separate times, Cho finds himself jumping onto this moving van as it tries to speed away from him. You get to see Cho kick his way through the windshield and brawl inside the van until it wrecks throwing three or four people through the now windshieldless front of it. You get to see Cho beat up the same people for ten minutes before, after, and during the wreck and you get to see Cho dragged through the streets as he hangs off the back of the van, before finally being thrown off it and left in a heap on the street.
When he finally gets back to the art gallery, limping because his legs are all raw from being dragged, you're laughing because his pants are ripped up in the front where he was dragged and all of it was because he was trying to save some stupid dolls! That's what insurance is for dummy! And it turns out that having his shipment of Ninja Ken and Geisha Barbie dolls stolen isn't the worst news he'll get that day, because once he stumbles back to the gallery, he discovers that grandma has gotten herself stabbed by a ninja and that Kane is missing!
After a quick funeral for grandma, Cho tells David that he must take on this mystery ninja alone and the next thing we see is Cho pressing a button on a wall and a secret drawer slides out. When it opens, fog rolls out of it and inside is his ninja gear! Guys who say they are retired never just throw their crap out or sell it to the army surplus store. They always have it neatly stored where it can be easily accessed once their past comes back to haunt them. I suppose it's more dramatic than watching Cho drive around Salt Lake - err, Los Angeles and try to find a store that sells throwing stars and smoke bombs. I also thought him storing it in a secret freezer was a nice touch.
This leads to the climatic rooftop battle between Braden and Cho. There isn't much in the way of realistic ebb and flow to the fight and the ninja use their super powers to disappear and reappear where ever is convenient for the action as well as losing and finding their swords over and over, but if you're paying your money to see guys in ninja outfits fight it out and are impressed by the variety weapons used by them, then you more than get your money's worth here. I was kind of thinking that when we had a close up of Cho all decked out in his ninja gear and we saw that he was wearing on eyeliner, that I had gotten a little bit more than my money's worth, but maybe it was some ancient way of keeping the sun out of his eyes like that stuff that baseball players put under their eyes.
Consistently hilarious in idea and execution, this movie is exactly what you would expect and hope it to be and then some. Braden will have you thinking of Will Ferrell and even develops a maniacal laugh as the movie progresses which only enhances his bad guy credentials. Sho and Kane demonstrate no aptitude for anything beyond jumping around and throwing kicks here and there, while Cathy brings nothing to the table other than a bad dye job. Everyone else in the movie is even worse. Just in case you were still on the fence as to get this one or not, you should know that Braden, the super duper ninja that he is, tries to have Cathy killed by tying her up in a hot tub and tries to have Kane done away by leaving him trapped in a sauna! All of this almost makes you forget that no one ever bothered to explain who all those ninja were that killed Cho's family and set all of this into motion in the first place.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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