American Ninja 4: The Annihilation [Blu-ray]

Here are only a few reasons why this movie surpasses even Plan 9 as the worst movie ever made.

1. Every cliche in the book has been written in. Like the soldier coming to the retired American Ninja at his Peace Corps classroom to ask for his help in rescuing the other American Ninja where the retired ninja responds "I told you the last time, it was the last time." BAM!

2. All the bad ninjas are COLORCODED! Don't know which ninja is more skilled than the others? Well, they're all wearing prime colors and you know which one is the boss because he's got an eyepatch.

3. The American Ninja enlists the help of some kind of retro-80's junkyard gang to take on the bad ninjas like something out of Mad Max.

4. Lastly we have scenes like the recently un-retired ninja fashioning a new sword. One scene he's got what looks like a led pipe and an grinder and in the next he's got a perfectly polished sword. The best scene however, is where the American Ninja, wearing a t-shirt and jeans is about to attack the bad ninja castle when he jumps into a convenient hole in the ground and immediately jumps back out in full black ninja gear. OH WAIT! I forgot about the scene when he catches a crossbow arrow in his teeth and stabs the guy next to him with it while it's still in his mouth.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this movie. Nothing like a good chuckle and no brain cells required. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who loves a good bathos.

Michael Dudikofff of 'American Ninja' 1 & 2 comes out of retirement to save David Bradley of 'American Ninja' 3 who is captured in Africa by a band of evil ninja's. Say what you want but I love this movie. After all, who doesn't love story's where a few brave warriors defeat all odds and the enemy to save the day!

Obviously not an Academy Award winner, but who cares. This is a total guy film. A couple of buddies with a six pack or two and you're good to go! Not to forget, the late Robin Stille is a very attractive addition to the story.

I need to admit, I was never a fan of the "American Ninja" series, but I'm a sucker for action hero team-ups like this. At the time of this one's release, Michael Dudikoff was already an established name in the martial arts B-movie genre, and David Bradley would soon be doing neat stuff like Cyborg Soldier and Hard Justice, so their collaboration seems especially cool in retrospect. It's just a bit of a shame that the two of them don't do any real teaming up until the end of this film, and an even bigger shame that such an opportunity didn't yield anything but average results...but damn if it isn't an entertaining sort of disappointment.

The story: Special Forces expert Sean Davidson (Bradley) is sent into an oppressed African nation to free a Delta team from the clutches of a terrorist duo (James Booth and Ron Smerczak) with an army of ninja at their command, but when he too is captured, a retired Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff, Cobra) must return to action and finish the job.

You can argue at which point in the series it officially happened, but definitely by now, ninja have become a gimmick and completely extraneous to the actual plot. Really the only reason they're still hanging around - wearing heavy, color-coded jumpsuits in a hot, colorless African landscape and behaving more like foot soldiers than mystical shadow warriors - is to give Sean and Joe a reason to go through their own miniature becoming-a-ninja rituals and break out their ninja weapons. Admittedly, in the former's case, this immediately leads to the best action scene in the movie, wherein he takes on a whole squad of ninja with a bow, a strand of wire, a club, nunchuka, and shuriken. But like the costumes, the action looked silly long before that and doesn't really improve: few of the eight fight scenes are downright awful, but they all adhere to a lackluster standard of hit & miss camera angles, over-editing, and questionably-executed choreography. Most disappointingly, Dudikoff and Bradley don't ever really battle side-by-side, although they do have an okay-ish fight against eachother late in the movie.

The lack of actual teaming up between the two stars is mostly due to Michael Dudikoff's character not making an appearance until the movie's second half, whereupon he takes over the spotlight from David Bradley as the main lead. It's kinda hard to judge which of them has the weirder onscreen adventure, but since Dudikoff's half features more screentime for the film's over-the-top despicable villains, his side takes the cake. These two baddies are really something: James Booth's character is so darn evil that he whips the bound Delta team members to make them lick his shoes, and Ron Smerczak plays an arrogant sheik who encourages his forces to fight to the death but admits that he considers the promised heavenly reward to be mere propaganda. Jerks, I know, but they help keep the movie interesting: as hammy as the acting is and as beyond implausible as a lot of the action seems, the one thing that "American Ninja 4" has going for it is that it's never boring. Occasionally, it even flaunts some decent cinematography, like the helicopter shots of the entire ninja force training on a mountaintop. Director Cedric Sundstrom (who also did American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt) wasn't a genius but clearly knew how to do his job when it came to intentionally campy junk like this.

On the whole, "American Ninja 4" doesn't really do it for me, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad movie. For what it's worth, it might be the best installment in the series since the original film. Know yourself before you make a purchase.

This is the best movie of all time. THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE. The acting is so amazing.
If Lee Strauss and Shakespeare were alive today, they would have a heartache from so much awesomeness.
Keanu Reeves would have made this movie more perfect but I'm sure there's some politics when you get too many amazing actors in a room, they would outperform each other.

I really wish I was Ninja. I can not be one because I can never be as cool as these guys.
I don't know why they didn't make an American Ninja 6. I think I will kill myself because they didn't.
I'm very sad. I hate my ninja self for life because of this. Please keep fighting American Ninja.
You are the true heroes of the world. Nobody understands the ninja powers that you have.

Michael Dudikoff returns as the original American Ninja, Joe Armstrong, in American Ninja 4: The Annihilation, but you may forget this long before he finally makes an appearance near the 44m mark. Joe is now a teacher for the Peace Corps and ex-superior Gavin (David Sherwood) cynically laments that "his head is full of peace, love, and life". When Gavin shows up at the church where Joe teaches, pleading with him to reconsider his non-involvement with the violent plot, Joe still takes a few moments before deciding whether to rescue his friend from certain death.

That friend is Sean Davidson, the American Ninja played by David Bradley in American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt. He's been captured by Colonel Scarf Mulgrew (James Booth) and Sheik Ali Maksood (Ron Smerczak), who have succeeded in making a nuclear suitcase bomb to wipe out New York. A previously-deployed Delta Force team also failed at subduing the duo and everyone will be burned alive within a week.

This includes Carl, the token black guy who serves doubly as a replacement for Curtis Jackson (the awesome Steve James from American Ninja 1 through 3, absent here), and the annoying sidekick who serves no other purpose than to make the hero look good. He's so useless that Sean expresses utter disbelief that he's getting shafted with him for the mission... you can almost hear him thinking "Dude, I am so not fighting ninjas with Carl. Carl? That Carl? You've got to be kidding me!" When ninjas later descend on Carl's hiding place, he fires three close range shots only to have each bullet dodged; this not only accentuates Carl's ineptitude, but indicates that Sean, in the midst of ass-kicking nearby, is faster than a speeding bullet.

Joe eventually saves the day by enlisting the help of a ragtag mob from nearby Sulfur Springs, a "rallying point" for those generically pissed off with Mulgrew and his wily ways. Before Joe walks off into the sunset, tiptoeing over fallen enemies and comrades alike, he duels it out with the one-eyed Super Ninja, one so adept at his art form that not even the lack of depth perception can defeat him.

Mulgrew is a genuinely great villain, though his "ex-British police officer" status wouldn't suggest as such. Not only does he first appear at the local bar in a puff of smoke, but he gets some entertainingly evil dialogue. When a captive asserts that the demons from Hell are coming to get Mulgrew, he replies to "tell my friend the Devil I'm not ready to come home yet." He's regretful (lamenting that he "shoulda killed [Sarah] when I killed her father"), intolerant of religion ("Are you mad? There are no bloody priests: I shot them all months ago."), and quick on the draw, both in guns and lovemaking ("I think she needs a stiff talking to ... I'm going to have you, but I won't keep you too long"). His Sheik cohort barely warrants recognition, save for clapping on both success and deadly failure in his outdoor Ninja Olympics obstacle course.

With just one more installment in the series, The Annihilation is entertaining enough for what it is: ninjas, fight scenes, and villains, but it doesn't really excel at any of them. It's nearest win is Mulgrew as villain, but he plays it almost too straight, creating a situation where the comical nature of the rest of the movie drags his performance down, making him seem decidedly and unfairly unfunny. Still, to quote the ending, it's "not much for words, but comes through in the end."

Death by: 1: ninja, spike; 2, 3, 4: machine gun; 5: ninja, sword; 6: ninja, bow and arrow; 7: gun; 8: gun, fall from great height; 9: strangulation; 10, 11, 12: gun; 13: hanging; 14, 15, 16: ninja, bow and arrow; 17: ninja, strangulation; 18, 19, 20: ninja, shuriken; 21, 22: spear; 23, 24: ninja, knife; 25, 26, 27: ninja, sword; 28: explosion, fall from great height; 29: explosion; 30: ninja, shuriken; 31: ninja, crossbow; 32: ninja, snapped neck; 33: ninja, knife; 34, 35: burning; 36: machine gun; 37: machine gun, fall from great height; 38, 39: explosion; 40: machine gun; 41: explosion, fall from great height; 42: shotgun; 43: fall from great height; 44: explosion; 45, 46: fall from great height; 47: sword; 48: fall from great height; 49, 50: rocket launcher, explosion; 51: ninja, explosion; 52: ninja, beating. Sleaze by: None.