Bullet Points: American Ninja 4: The Annihilation

By the time 1991 rolled around and American Ninja 4: The Annihilation was released, Cannon Group had seen better times. The glory days of releasing dozens of films each year with the hopes that a select few might hit the mark had ended and we were instead left with rotten sequels like Superman 3: Worse than the flu, and anything starring David Bradley. It has been many years since I’ve watched American Ninja 3 due to my hatred for its lack of Dudikoff and it was only his inclusion that allowed my stubborn ass to re-watch this fourth entry into the American Ninja series. Wish me luck…

• Delta Force duds: The film opens with a bunch of soldiers escaping through the jungle from a group of ninjas. I can’t help but be appalled by their lack of coherent uniform scheme. Hell, some of them are just wearing tank tops and muscle shirts! We later learn that they are US military guys with the Delta Force, which totally dates this movie as being a late 80’s/early 90’s film since everyone was obsessed with Delta guys at the time. If it were made it 2014 it would be Navy SEALs.
• Stop capturing me bro: The Delta chumps get captured, tortured, and some get executed. The US gov’t decides to send in David Bradley and Dwayne Alexandre to rescue the men but even I could have told you that was a bad idea. They HALO jump into the area (which is cool), then put their denim and leather jackets on (even cooler) to enter the unnamed country to get busy rescuing.

• Big Blue Wrecking Crew: Bradley and Alexandre instantly fail to rescue the soldiers and the call is made to Joe Armstrong. He’s like the Mariano Rivera of ninja fighting! Joe has been doing the Peace Corp thing since we last saw him but it doesn’t take much to get him to un-retire and come to the aid of his friend. Let’s hope he does better than the wrecking crew.
• Mad Max rejects: Lord knows what country this movie takes place in. There is such and eclectic group of civilians that I had to stop asking questions and just accept that it’s “not Alabama”. Eventually, Dudi makes his way into the town of Sulphur Springs and gets the rabble of people who look like they walked right off the set of Patrick Swayze’s Steel Dawn. They end up being the wild card to the entire operation and give Joe just enough of a distraction to sneak his way into the ninja compound.

• Speaking of Joe: I’m glad that Joe and his friends weren’t in any sort of hurry or anything. Joe has mastered the “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” method as he casually walks from Sulphur Springs to the bad guy fort without a care in the world.
• Fightin’ mad: David Bradley always had the skills to be a good DTV action star. He could put on a good fight scene in just about every movie I saw him in. The problem I had in this film was that it was either filmed poorly as to not allow his true abilities to shine or that he never got the opportunity to fight anyone on his level. At one point, Bradley’s character beats the crap out of about 20 ninjas but the slow motion used and the fact that these same ninjas supposedly just kicked the hell out of a dozen Delta Force guys killed the scene for me.

• We need a hero, er villain: The greatest tragedy of American Ninja 4 is that the villains are pure garbage. They’re not intimidating, even when they’re torturing someone, and they are so random that I was more confused than anything. These guys were also weapons traffickers who were planning on detonating a bomb in the US so there should have been an added element of fear. Unfortunately, there was never that shot of the US Generals sitting around the table talking about how devastating an explosion in a major city could have been. That would have been easy to do and one more thing that could have added a sense of legitimacy to these guys.

• The Final Beat Down: Dudikoff fights the champion ninja while Bradley beats up an old man. Eventually, Dudi kicks the dude into a pile of munitions, drops in an ignition, and walks away as the dude explodes. Bradley basically just beats the old man to death. If any scene could work as a metaphor for how Cannon treated its co-stars than this is it.

It’s the return of Joe Armstrong so how about the return of the bonus Bullet Points!

• I like your style: Dudi catching an arrow in his mouth and then using that arrow to kill another ninja is the best thing about this movie.
• Training: Maybe instead of running the ninjas through flaming gauntlets and spears they should actually teach them to fight?
• Iron Chef: No joke, one of the Sulfur Springs guys invades the ninja fort swinging a frying pan!

The Verdict: A very lackluster effort put forth by the powers that be. Dudi doesn’t appear till halfway through the film and even then, only speaks a few lines. Bradley is made to be nothing but a second rate Joe and I’m kinda surprised that the damsel in distress didn’t leave with Dudi instead of David Bradley. He had already stolen all the glory, why not the girl too? I think the film’s worst flaw is that its villains are pathetic. It’s almost as if they were playing villain Mad Libs and just starting throwing out ideas. “Weapons traffickers..why not? Middle Eastern…sure. Ninjas…ah, f*ck it!” I hate to say it, but this could be the worst of all the American Ninja movies. Oh wait, I’ve never actually seen American Ninja 5….