American Ninja 2: The Confrontation

Michael J. Dudikoff and Steve James are back from American Ninja and this time the volume of ninja gets ramped up to ludicrous levels. How do you get so many ninja? Well you just build an evil clone army of them so you can be a drug kingpin. What? Yep.

In another instance of Golan and Globus having very little understanding of the ninja, we also have very little understanding of their understanding. When you can clone ninja, what do you do with the ninja you've cloned? Well you become the kingpin of drugs. So why do you need ninja? Are they couriers? Are they drug dealers? Are they guards? Why not just have guys with guns? And why are your cloned ninja so inept? The plot is quite dumb.

Dudikoff is back and we're all too happy to see him. However, due to no fault of his own, he's not quite the same Pvt. Joe Armstrong from the first film. We really missed the unnecessary and out of place James Dean poses. He's a little less featured in this one, the stars are the ninja. However, we do give props for the incredibly tight pants that inspired the cinematographer to focus the viewers attention on a bulbous package. Ridiculous.

Steve James doesn't even bother waiting to get his shirt off and pretty much doesn't bother with clothes for the majority of this film. He fights a ton of ninja on his own and suddenly possesses very unusual weapons to dispatch them. Hilarious.

The stunts are incredibly dangerous and  many many men clearly get injured in horrific manners in the filming of this movie. There is a couple of extremely excellent action sequences (the beach fight, the ninja vs truck sequence, and the bar fight) that are top notch and make this film worth watching just for them. Forget all the other elements; these sequences are fantastic.

With that in mind though, we didn't feel that American Ninja 2: The Confrontation is quite the same film as American Ninja. Yes there is a few sequences that are exceptional but there are also some very stale jokes and the final showdown pales in comparison to the final showdown in the first film. There is also less Dudikoff being a jackass and Charlie #2 needs more screen-time. Its a classic stinker but saying that it is the centerpiece of the franchise is a mistake.

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