Past Misdeeds: Avenging Force (1986)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

Former intelligence agent Matt Hunter (Michael Dudikoff) packs in his family - consisting of his grandfather (Rick Boyle) and his little sister Sarah (Allison Gereighty) - to visit his old secret ops partner Larry Richards (Steve James) and his family in New Orleans. Larry’s retired too, but apart from being a family man, he’s also running for senate, clearly on the sort of humanist platform that’ll get you labelled as a communist by quite a few people, particularly when the politician in question is a gentleman of colour like Larry.

So, despite being rather awesome, Larry has made enemies, in particular a secret society of rich fascists around Professor (who knows of what, though further proceedings suggest it has something to do with being evil) Elliott “Hitler was right” (actual quote) Glastenbury (John P. Ryan), who add to their evilness by having stolen their name from the seminal British folk rock band (The) Pentangle. Because Nazis are assholes, some of the groups’ henchmen attack a Mardi Gras parade Larry, Matt and their families take part in, murdering one of Larry’s children in the process.

Things don’t become more pleasant from there on in, and various attacks on our heroes eventually leave only Matt and Sarah alive. The Pentangle’s leaders have a hobby quite befitting their politics, and love to hunt The Most Dangerous Game™, so they “invite” Matt to take part in one of these hunts as their chosen victim. Which must have seemed like a good idea at the time; one suspects the Professor ignored the decidedly un-Aryan subject of hubris in his studies.

Quite surprising for the generally exploitative way Cannon and Golan-Globus chose their movies, they didn’t immediately follow up the success of American Ninja with a direct sequel. Instead, they put American Ninja’s leads Steve James and Michael Dudikoff and its director Sam Firstenberg to work on a film that does not contain any ninjas at all, but which otherwise does include pretty much everything else you’d expect from a low budget (though not that low budget) action film, except exploding huts. For reasons I don’t even want to ponder, this seems also to be meant as some sort of sequel to the Chuck Norris vehicle Invasion U.S.A., despite the only connection I can make out without having to watch a Chuck Norris (tied with Seagal as my least favourite US action movie lead) film, being Dudikoff’s character name, his job, and dead parents. And since all action movie heroes from the 80s are basically the same guy anyway, that’s not really enough to think of this as a sequel at all.

Instead of the ninjas, you get a film that works very, very hard to establish its heroes as the most awesome thing since sliced bread and its villains as the scum of the Earth, people who aren’t just Nazis (and just listen to how exactly the film actually hits the complete idiocy of right-wing “intellectuals” in Glastenbury’s speeches, probably without even having to try terribly hard), people who hunt others for sport, child killers, and probably puppy eaters, but also the kinds of guys who plan to sell Matt’s twelve year old sister into prostitution. Speaking of Nazis, it’s always a particular joy to find an 80s US action movie that uses them as its big bads instead of the more typical “Asian enemy of the day”, or “the Russians”, and I really appreciate the extra miles the film goes to turn its Nazis into proper cartoon villains while still keeping them perfectly in the correct spirit.

Of course, it would have been rather nice when, with the film’s heart placed on the left as it is, it would have made another step and not killed off James in your typical “black best friend in an action movie” style, particular since Steve James really is more charismatic, a less stiff actor, and also nicer to look at than Dudikoff, but then, we really can’t ask everything of what is only meant as basic action fodder.

Speaking of action, Firstenberg  was one of Cannon’s more dependable directors, not flashy but often able to rise above mere basic competence into the realm of the highly entertaining. In Avenging Force’s case this means there’s hardly a boring second on screen. Whenever nobody gets shot, spiked, strangled or otherwise killed, there’s a car chase, or a scene between Dudikoff and his sister that turns the emotional hysteria up to eleven (see also the imaginary chapter in my imaginary book about the action film as melodrama even when it doesn’t come from Hong Kong), or Steve James losing his shirt, with little that happens on screen having anything much to do with that pesky reality business, and instead everything aiming for the same kind of awesome kids of all ages get out of Power Metal. Best of all is that Firstenberg’s not just aiming at but hitting the mark in every scene, sometimes through the varied style of the action sequences, sometimes through the addition of little silly bits and pieces (a chase scene becomes something different once the chased bad guy puts on a straw hat, it turns out), clever application of atmospheric New Orleans and bayou locations (some of which were of course situated in LA), or outright ridiculous cheese like the costumes the Pentangle like to don during their chases. My favourite among the last is of course the wrestler gimp outfit.

On a more direct level of craft, I’m quite impressed with Firstenberg’s handling of escalation here. Instead of ever louder, higher in body count, and explosive, the action in Avenging Force becomes increasingly up close and personal, with shoot-outs and car chases in the end making place for grimy and dirty hand to hand struggles in the mud and the (excellently used) rain.


It’s all pretty inspiring stuff, really, at least as far as dumb yet affectionate entertainment goes; which is pretty far with me.

American Ninja (1985)

Mysterious private Joe T. Armstrong (Michael Dudikoff) has just barely arrived at an US Army base on the Philippines, and already gets into a whole load of trouble. First, he uses his mysterious (he’s a childhood amnesiac, of course) ninjitsu training to save Patricia (Judie Aronson), the daughter of the base’s commander, and perhaps the most insipid creature on Earth, from being kidnapped by the ninjas supporting a mysterious group of rebels, leading to everyone around, including said commanding officer, being very angry with him in a way every twelve year old will understand. Then more ninjas try to kill Joe T., a romance develops between Patricia and our hero, and after that, even more ninjas try to kill him, his co-soldier Corporal Jackson (Steve James) needs to be kicked by him until they become fast friends, and yet still more ninjas attempt the killing. Why, it’s as if nefarious things were going on in the Philippines.

I have to admit, I consciously left out the whole angle of what the bad guys in Sam Firstenberg’s American Ninja are all about here during the synopsis, and even that one of them is called The Black Star Ninja (Tadashi Yamashita), but the film itself seems so disinterested in giving its bad guys a plan that’s vaguely sensible even for action movie plans, I’m just finishing what the film starts. Sure, there’s also the thing where Joe finds out why he has ninja super powers, but that is dramatically so disconnected from the rest of the plot it’s not all that interesting to learn that John Fujioka taught him.

Of course – and fortunately, seeing as how little the film cares about these other things – this is one of the core texts of not only the not so short infatuation of Western filmmakers with ninjas – preferably Caucasian ones, unless they are called Sho Kosugi – but also of Golan, Globus and Cannon Films, and as such it just isn’t about giving a damn about its plot. If there’s some interest to find in the plot of a Cannon production, that’s more of a happy accident. What it is obviously all about is the action (yes, I’m a genius, why do you ask, dear reader?), and Firstenberg’s film delivers quite a lot of that here. Well, the fights are rather slow when you’ve seen comparable Asian films from decades earlier, a comparison that is rather inevitable when you encounter a film containing as many ninjas as this one does, the choreography is not particularly inspired, and while Michael Dudikoff isn’t as improbable a ninja as Franco Nero, nor is wearing a headband declaring him to be a ninja, he’s also not as convincing as one would like.

Dudikoff isn’t much of an actor here, either, mumbling his dialogue, emoting awkwardly, and more often than not making the impression he’s not at all happy being in front of the camera. Even though he never really became a great on-screen charismatic, it’s rather astonishing when you see him here and then compare with his efforts in 1986’s Dudikoff/James/Firstenberg film Avenging Force, where he has very quickly gotten a lot more present and willing. That film is actually superior to American Ninja in pretty much every aspect, now that I think about it – the action is tighter and more interesting, the acting better, Steve James shirtlesser, the villains more interesting and lively, and there’s even something of a plot.

But I digress, quite badly even, particularly since, having said all these mean and nasty things about basically every aspect of American Ninja, I also have to note that I still had a blast watching it, because all the awkwardness and the cheese on display don’t feel like signs of incompetence at all but rather as if this were a much scrappier production than it is, of pretty insane enthusiasm, which is quite a feat for a film so clearly cashing in on various fads. True or not, competent or not, the way the film throws ninjas and slightly wonky action sequences at its audience feels a lot like kids playing with the stuff they feel is awesome, and there’s an excitement here surrounding even the most stupid moments that makes the film very much worth watching. Even if a lot about American Ninja is wrong, it just feels so right to the twelve year old inside me (and that’s its target audience anyhow).

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,action,martial arts,sam firstenberg,michael dudikoff,steve james,judie aronson

In short: Midnight Ride (1990)

Whatever mildly diverting powers this competent yet boring The Hitcher variation has can be explained by an excellently over the top performance by Mark Hamill after Star Wars but before he found his true calling as a voice actor and instead spent his time stumbling from one lame low budget film to the next. If you have a script that has clearly no clue about mental illness, and isn’t clever enough to go the iconic serial killer route where you don’t actually talk about mental illness but about the embodied fears and anxieties of a society, the best that can happen to your panto villain is a performance like Hamill’s here, all sweating, wild grimacing and various types of over-active rambling. On the more negative side, Hamill’s overacting makes Michael Dudikoff’s bland asshole hero look even more bland; and clearly, nobody involved in the film seems to actually have realized that Dudikoff’s character’s reaction to his wife leaving him (stalking, cursing, and the threat of violence) makes him not the most sympathetic of characters, to say the least.

Why, a film with a few more brain cells to rub together might have even made something out of the difference between its two male characters only being one of degrees, and made the film the story of how Lara (Savina Gersak) has to fight for her life and her identity on two fronts. Instead, director Bob Bralver pretends there’s moral clarity about who of the male characters is the hero of the piece, doesn’t do much with Lara, and concentrates on blandly competent action scenes and a minor appearance by a particularly sleepy Robert Mitchum earning a bit of whiskey money.

It’s watchable as far as this sort of low budget affair goes, but there are just too many good opportunities that would have needed not money but just a bit of imagination wasted to make for an enjoyable film for me. But then, I never was involved in a car chase against my wife (which might be explained by the absence of driver’s licence, car, or wife in my life, or because I’m not that much of an ass).

Technorati-Markierungen: in short,american movies,thriller,bob bralver,michael dudikoff,mark hamill,savina gersak,robert mitchum

In short: Cyberjack (1995)

In the near cyberpunk future (it’ll come any day now), your typical human problems are still the same. So cop Nick James (Michael Dudikoff) breaks down after all-purpose crazy bad guy Nassim (Brion James) kills his partner, and now spends his life as a gambling addicted alcoholic, working as a janitor in a computer research lab.

Because that’s a sensible idea, chief scientist Dr. Royce (Duncan Fraser) and his equally scientific daughter Dr. Alex Royce (Suki Kaiser) have developed a computer virus with some sort of biological component (don’t ask me, or the writer for that matter). This sort of project is crazy bad guy catnip, of course, particularly after the virus escapes for a bit and causes a nasty and deadly accident, so Nassim is soon breaking into the lab, shooting people and planning to put the virus into a microchip implanted in his own brain. Surely, that’ll be the way to world domination or something.

Only Nick escapes the first violent sweep of the lab complex because he’s hidden away and distracted listening to a baseball game and watching a holographic stripper. Now, it falls to the rather unwilling former cop to go all Bruce Willis on Nassim’s ass.

Yes, obviously, Robert Lee’s Cyberjack should be all rights be called Cyber Hard but you shouldn’t be too honest with your titles, so it’s probably for the better it isn’t.

In the wild and exciting world of Die Hard clones, this really is a rather fun example of the form, not because it is any great shakes as an action film – it’s decent more often than not in that regard but that’s mostly it – but because Lee (or writer Eric Poppen) decides to put a lot of stupidly awesome/awesomely stupid details into the film, starting with the holographic stripper (and all hail to Michael Dudikoff’s indescribable holographic stripper watching face here) as a desperate measure to get some nudity in (rather a thing for a lot of low budget Die Hards). Because one holographic stripper does not a stupidly awesome movie make, there’s also a running gag about Dudikoff’s favourite, always losing baseball team (certainly not supposed to be the Cubs, no sir), that finds our hero taking a break to listen to a game at the most improbable moments (like when the building he’s in is overrun by violent criminals, and he is already fighting them), various scenes of Brion James in an exalted mood(described by Alex as looking “like a lab rat on steroids”, which is the best possible description) ranting and raving that culminate in him suggesting he’s god after he has fused with the computer virus, an unhelpful police drone, and many other bits and bobs of excellent nonsense. Oh, and once good old Brion is all virused up, he also can shoot green smoky beams out of his eyes to – for example – infect unsuspecting swat team cyborgs.

So, while the shooting and the explosions may only by intermittently exciting, the bizarre crap that’s happening around them is more than enough to keep at least my eyes glued to the screen, and the corners of my mouth turned upwards in one of these expressions of mirth and joy you sometimes read about.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,japanese movies,canadian movies,action,sf,in short,michael dudikoff,brion james,suki kaiser

On ExB: Avenging Force (1986)

Is this the magnum opus of Michael-Dudikoff-and-Steve-James-featuring Cannon action despite the absence of ninjas? It sure might be from where I’m looking.

There may be no American ninjas involved this time, but Avenging Force makes up for that sad lack by its sheer power of awesomeness. My column at the venerable Exploder Button does get rather excited, so please click on through, unless you have a very weak heart.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,action,sam firstenberg,michael dudikoff,steve james,john p. ryan,other places