American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987)

I saw this Dudikoff classic back in high school, when a buddy and I rented it after a long night of playing Killer Instinct at the local bowling alley. It's amazing to think that it celebrated its 20th anniversary on May 1st of this year. Maybe the DVD people will release a 20th anniversary edition, but I doubt it.

American Ninja 2: The Confrontation continues the saga of Dudikoff as an army guy/American Ninja, and in this case he must go to a Caribbean island to track a kidnapped scientist who's working for The Lion to mass produce an army clone ninjas (the Caribbean island probably was a huge selling point to get Dudikoff to sign off on this one). I've read in an interview that Lucas had this film in mind when he developed Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Either that, or he was mailing it in to such a degree he needed to steal from DTV Dudikoff classics. Man, Dudikoff would've made a better pre-Dark Side Darth Vader than that silly, whining Hayden Christensen, right?

One really memorable moment for me in this film came when The Lion's henchman or something launched an eleven hit combo on some dude. I think in Killer Instinct parlance, that would be a "King Combo," but my memory's a tad off on details like that.

As we all know, Michael Dudikoff is the American Ninja, and there ain't none higher, sucker American Ninjas (like Timothy Van Patten and David Bradley) call him sire. The film is the classic Dudikoff Ninja vehicle, where we the viewer are simply waiting for him to kick major ass at the end, and we get small amuse bouches of ass kicking to whet our appetites before it happens. The inclusion of a mass of cloned ninjas just makes it that much better.

I'm not sure exactly what the drawbacks are in this one. It is pretty dumb, even for a DTV actioner, which may turn some people off. I think there might be a message about the ills of playing God, but I don't think so. As far as movies with cloning in them go, this is way better than Schwarzenegger's The 6th Day, Michael Keaton's Multiplicity, and the aforementioned Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Just cloning a whole bunch of dudes in generic black ninja suits is such an amazing idea, and would've saved Multplicity from the throes of sentimentality.

I'm almost certain you can purchase this in the American Ninjas 1 and 2 two-pack for like $10 to $15. It's worth it. You may even want to rent them both in the same night, which I would recommend as well. Stay away from part 3, because of the four, for some reason that's the only one sans Dudikoff. Again, I must stress that you're watching a true DTVC Hall of Famer in one of his best known roles: you really can't go wrong with that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092548/

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