{"id":1352,"date":"2024-07-27T00:13:30","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T00:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2024-10-14T00:43:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T04:43:32","slug":"american-ninja-4-the-annihilation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/27\/american-ninja-4-the-annihilation\/","title":{"rendered":"American Ninja 4: The Annihilation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"American Ninja 4: The Annihilation <\/strong>(1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Cedric Sundstrom\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Geeves\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nicolaas Tenbroek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Joseph Wein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 8, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael Dudikoff, David Bradley, James Booth, Dwayne Alexandre, Ken Gampu, Robin Stille, Ron Smerczak, Franz Dobrowsky, Kely McClung, Jody Abrahams, Anthony Fridjohn, David Sherwood, Sean Kelly, Jamie Bartlett.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $358,047 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Michael Dudikoff returns to play the role that made him famous in American Ninja 4: The Annihilation<\/strong> only this time he shares the spotlight with David Bradley who replaced him in the title role in American Ninja 3. Yes, both American Ninjas team up in this fourth installment of Cannon\u2019s most popular series. Their job, as you might expect, is to take down yet another cartoonish megalomaniac, this one turned up to 111 by James Booth (Avenging Force). He\u2019s the best thing in the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The idea of a Dudikoff-Bradley team-up is a good one; alas, it\u2019s misleading. Despite what\u2019s promised by the poster art, the two leads barely appear in any scenes together. They share some screen time at the end, but it\u2019s a moot point by then. I thought the idea was to see them fight side by side the whole time. That\u2019s what the poster\/video box implies. In the legal profession, this is what they call false advertising. That\u2019s Cannon for you!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Speaking of dynamic duos, the production team of Golan-Globus split up around the time American Ninja 3 came out. Due to irreconcilable differences with the studio\u2019s new financier Giancarlo Parretti, Menahem Golan resigned from Cannon and started his own company, 21st<\/sup> Century Film Corporation. In its five-year existence, it yielded cinematic trash-treasures like The Phantom of the Opera (the one with Robert Englund), The Forbidden Dance (the other Lambada picture), Captain America (pre-MCU) and Death Wish V: The Face of Death (their last movie). Yoram Globus stayed at Cannon and produced movies with Christopher Pearce who took over as CEO after the departure of Italian movie producer Ovidio G. Assonitis. It just wasn\u2019t the same after Golan left. It shows in lame flicks like American Ninja 4: The Annihilation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dudikoff is back in, but co-star Steve James is out. He\u2019s replaced by a different black guy played by Dwayne Alexandre (Red Sun Rising). Three words, NOT EVEN CLOSE. If you ever doubted Steve was the true star of the American Ninja flicks, here\u2019s your proof. The plot has our heroes attempting to rescue a captured Delta Force unit from the aforementioned megalomaniac Colonel Mulgrew, a British ex-cop who despises Americans. He has a stronghold (guarded by ninjas, of course) in some unnamed foreign country most likely somewhere in Africa. Or maybe it\u2019s the Philippines? It\u2019s never clear. Anyway, he\u2019s joined forces with Muslim terrorist Ali (Smerczak, Cyborg Cop) in his efforts to extort $50M from the American government. If they don\u2019t pay up, a suitcase containing a nuclear bomb will be set off in New Work.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess the CIA needed a couple of ninjas on the payroll (affirmative action?) seeing that Sean Davidson (Bradley) and Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) are both agents now. Actually, Joe is technically a former agent; he left the company to join the Peace Corps as a teacher (WTF?!). With American Ninja #1 out of the picture (at least for now), American Ninja #2 is sent in to rescue the soldiers with non-field agent Carl Brackston (Alexandre). In their efforts to rescue their fellow Americans, the guys get captured along with Sarah (Stille, The Slumber Party Massacre), the kind nurse at a Peace Corps hospital who hides the guys from Mulgrew\u2019s goons in the morgue. They\u2019re taken to the fortress where Sean beats down several bad ninjas before being chained up in a dungeon with the others. They\u2019re set to be executed with the other hostages in 24 hours time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0With Bradley temporarily out of action, it\u2019s up to Dudikoff to finish the mission which now includes rescuing American Ninja #2 and his team. He appears at the 45-minute mark teaching environmental science to a bunch of kids in a poor country. His CIA boss shows up and leaves a folder. This time, Joe accepts the mission. Sean is his friend after all. He goes in and proceeds to kick ass all over the place, disguised as a priest at one point. He finds an ally in local rebel leader Tamba (Gampu, King Solomon\u2019s Mines) whose army appears to have been recruited from a Mad Max movie. I kept waiting for Wez to show up. I think you already know how it all ends.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like its predecessor, American Ninja 4: The Annihilation <\/strong>wasn\u2019t widely released. It didn\u2019t open in Philly. I saw it courtesy of a friend who secretly loaned me the screener copy from the video store where he worked. LOL! Wasn\u2019t I quite the lawless one in the early 90s? I\u2019m glad I saw it that way because American Ninja 4: The Annihilation<\/strong> isn\u2019t even worth the price of a 99-cent rental. I hate to say it, but it\u2019s bad. It\u2019s not entertainingly bad like its predecessor, it\u2019s just bad. It has two things going for it: (1) the return of Michael Dudikoff and (2) Booth\u2019s scenery-chewing performance. Dudikoff may not be a master thespian, but he\u2019s got serious kick-ass skills. It\u2019s cool watching him fight. Thankfully, he gets to do a lot of it in his half of the picture. Booth, who previously made the mistake of going up against a ninja in Pray for Death, is one of the great 80s bad guy character actors provided you like villains that camp it up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If not for Dudikoff and Booth, American Ninja 4: The Annihilation<\/strong> would be unwatchable. It is flatly directed, poorly written, badly acted, clumsily staged and idiotic to the max. Alexandre is bland and forgettable as the sidekick. He brings nothing but himself to the party which is the same as showing up empty-handed. The late Stille could have been replaced by a department store mannequin and no one would know the difference. Cedric Sundstrom still can\u2019t direct to save his life. He appears not to have learned anything from his previous gig, American Ninja 3.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The one scene in which both stars appear on screen at the same time is a weird one. Joe sneaks into the dungeon and attempts to rescue somebody he assumes to be his good buddy Sean. It sure looks like him. Instead of showing gratitude, \u201cSean\u201d attacks him and they fight. \u201cSean\u201d turns out to be a ninja disguised as Sean utilizing the practice of \u201cHensojutsu\u201d (i.e. the ancient art of impersonation). Now that\u2019s what I call a cheat!<\/p>\n

American Ninja 4: The Annihilation<\/strong> should have been the last, but when did Cannon ever rely on common sense? They took a totally unrelated picture called American Dragons starring Bradley and retitled it American Ninja 5. I didn\u2019t even bother with it. I still have no desire to see it, so don\u2019t expect a review any time soon or ever. It\u2019s my sincere hope that the series doesn\u2019t get a reboot. For me, Michael Dudikoff and Steve James are the one and only American Ninja team.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Ninja 4: The Annihilation (1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Cedric Sundstrom\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Geeves\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nicolaas Tenbroek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Joseph Wein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 8, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael Dudikoff, David Bradley, James Booth, Dwayne Alexandre, Ken Gampu, Robin Stille, Ron Smerczak, Franz Dobrowsky, Kely McClung, Jody Abrahams, Anthony Fridjohn, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-b-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/American-Ninja-4-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1943,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}