American Ninja 5

Readers of my user comments will see that I reviewed the first four "American Ninja" movies years ago, but I only got around to reviewing the last entry just now. Hope it was worth the wait. Speaking of waiting, it wasn't worth the wait for me to track down and watch a copy of this movie.

The action, the main attraction of a movie like this, is very lame. There is only one real martial arts battle in the first 30 minutes of the movie. When the action does start coming, there is nothing exciting or special about the martial arts sequences. The movie is also not very well made. There are signs that footage is missing from the movie - either it was lost or never filmed, leaving to some question marks such as how Bradley's character severs the chain on his handcuffs. But even if the missing footage was here, the movie would still suffer from a badly written screenplay - there's barely a plot here, and it crawls at a snail's pace, with plenty of scenes seemingly only there to pad out the running time.

I suppose Bradley gives one of his better performances, though he's still not a very compelling actor. And it's always good to see Pat Morita, though he only gets three short scenes. But even with that stuff, the movie will still have even dedicated martial arts movie fans squirming in their seats.

I've been seeing lots of movies on the bottom 100 list lately and they have been getting steadily worse, the last one, Th underground comedy movie was just horrible. American Ninja 5 though, is far too good for that list. Sure, the dialog is stupid, the plot is stupid, the action is lame, and he actors can't act but it's fun. You really have to see this as a comedy (a much funnier one than many of the actual comedies on the list) which is made abundantly clear by he use of light hearted music in all the action scenes. I would like to give this film a higher score than 3 out of 10 but I can't ignore the fact that it is a bad film, in pretty much every way. American Ninja 5 is in essence a "so bad it's good" movie but doesn't quite get there.

I can live with David Bradley being a bad actor and all, but when just everything else is just as terrible as his acting, it starts to get real ugly. American Ninja V is a great example of how some people just don't know when to stop. After the third movie, this series has been nothing more than a piece of crap. This last movie is the worst of them all. The action scenes (fight scenes, mainly) are very bad. The story is childish, stupid and totally uninteresting. I almost fell asleep several times during the movie, and even the action didn't make it any better. What is Pat Morita doing in this disaster? I guess his quality control was out of function the day he signed up for this one.

Take it for what it is... The movie has got bad writing and semi bad acting.. However if you manage to overlook these faults it might be OK. If you take it for what it is it might be an entertaining action flick.... I think the lead actor is pretty decent, but overlooking his work judged by IMDb, one can't be impressed. If you see it for what it is, it is a mindless no thinking action movie. It is the perfect movie for a hangover. A plus for the movie is seeing the legendary Pat Morita, even though only for a small part, but it is nice to see the old martial arts expert on film again.. the setting of the movie is really nice, it takes place in the Caribbean or something. It is always nice to see views like those.

Garbage martial arts movie that has nothing to do with the previous four American Ninja films, despite the title. This was originally called American Dragons but Cannon changed the name to reap whatever limited rewards they could from having it associated with the American Ninja series. Note David Bradley's character name is different from his previous appearances in the series. The plot to this stinker has "American Ninja" Joe (David Bradley) teaming up with Hiro (Lee Reyes, brother of Ernie Jr.), a young man whose granduncle (Pat Morita) wants him to learn to be a ninja. The two must rescue a girl from a ponytailed villain called Viper. Stupid stuff. Lacks any of the cheesy appeal of the American Ninja movies that starred Michael Dudikoff. Not even Mr. Miyagi can save this one. Good for some mockery I suppose.