American Samurai (1992)

American Samurai (1992)

 

Starring: David Bradley, Mark Dacascos, Valarie Trapp, Rex Ryon, John Fujioka, Douvi Cohen
Director: Sam Firstenberg
Action Director: Guy Norris, Douglas Milton

 

David Bradley’s career didn’t exactly “take off” after he took over for Michael Dudikoff in American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt.  Then again, maybe that was intentional on his part. Oh sure, he had a steady dream of gigs up until he retired from acting in 1997, but considering the output of over direct-to-video stars like Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Gary Daniels, who were starting up at about the same time, it kinda surprises me that Bradley wasn’t more prolific. American Samurai was Bradley’s fourth starring role after two American Ninja sequels and a forgotten erotic thriller called Lower Level.

The title is obviously a ploy to bring in the same audiences who gobbled up the American Ninja movies, albeit without the “We liked Dudikoff better” baggage attached to it. It was produced by Cannon Pictures, a distribution arm of MGM focused on low-budget movies. Such a movie was only appropriate, considering that the now-defunct Cannon Films had produced the American Ninja franchise. The resulting film, however, was less American Ninja and more Bloodsport. The film does little to separate itself from its inspiration, the exception being that this is one of the gorier American martial arts films of that time period. Apparently there is an NC-17 cut of the movie floating around out there.

An American couple and their baby, Andrew, are flying over Japan when they run into engine problems and crash into a mountainside forest. The couple dies, but baby Andrew is rescued by a kindly kenjutsu master (John Fujioka, of American Ninja) and taught the way of the samurai. As Andrew grows up, he is the subject of scorn by the master’s son, Kenjiro (Mark Dacascos, of Drive and John Wick 3), who resents the attention his father gives the gaijin. Things come to a head when an adult Andrew (Cyborg Cop’s David Bradley) receives the family katana as a symbol of his responsibility to carry on the Sanga family tradition. Kenjiro reveals to his father that he has joined the Yakuza and is promptly disowned by daddy.

Some years later (the movie just sort of jumps around without ever telling us how much time has passed), Andrew is now a top journalist living in Los Angeles. He survives an attempt on his life by a bunch of Hired Goons™ who make off with his sacred katana. A few months later, he uncovers evidence that Kenjiro might be pulling off hits in Istanbul, Turkey. He flies over there to investigate, accompanied by a plucky female photographer, Janet (Valarie Trapp). Andrew initially despises her, but they aren’t together for more than 24 hours before he’s bedding her. Every negative stereotype about women being attracted to condescending assholes is present in these early scenes.

After beating up some gangsters at a bar, Andrew is shanghaied by a Turkish crime boss (Douvi Cohen) and taken to the Arena of Death. This is an underground fight tournament where people duke it out, not too unlike Bloodsport’s kumite, but with bladed weapons instead of feet and fists. The reigning champion of the Arena is Kenjiro, and he’s eager to settle his past grievances with Drew. Meanwhile, Drew is goaded into fighting with the threat that the organizers will harm Janet if he doesn’t. Let the games begin!

So, Bloodsport With Swords American Samurai is obviously a far-from-original film. It even goes so far as to give Bradley’s Andrew Collins his own version of Jackson. That would be the burly, bearded Texan Harrison (Rex Ryon, of the other adaptation of The Man in the Iron Mask from 1998), whose specialty is with the Bowie knife. While watching this with a friend of mine, I had to ask out loud just how an overweight Texan could get invited to a clandestine fight competition in Turkey. With Bloodsport’s Jackson, you can imagine him participating in whatever was the 80s equivalent to the UFC—some sort of Rough-and-Tumble organization—and catching the attention of the organizers that way. In Harrison’s case…was he involved in underground knife-fighting in the States? My friend suggested that the guy had a series of VHS tapes (probably priced at about $39.95 a pop + shipping and handling) about how to skin a gator with a Bowie knife and that caught the attention of Arena of Death people.

The film features a rather odd assortment of contestants. One fellow wields a claymore and dresses as if he had just gotten back from auditions for a Deathstalker sequel. The guy is even billed as “Conan” and is played by stuntman Rocky McDonald, whose credits include Dark City and Mission Impossible II. There’s a blonde-haired Brit named McKinney (Ron Vreeken, who did fight choreography for Richard Norton’s Rage) who fights with a kwan do. One guy dresses in animal skins, wears a horned helmet, fights with a battle axe, and is referred to as The Swede. There are also a pair of Chinese fighters, one of whom sports a queue as if he were still living in the Qing Dynasty. A knife-wielding Texan and an American Samurai are probably the closest thing this tournament has to normal combatants.

The fighting was handled by veteran Hollywood stuntman Guy Norris, whose biggest recent jobs include both Suicide Squad films and Mad Max: Fury Road. A Milton Douglas, whom I am unfamiliar with (nor could I find anything about him on the IMDB, is credited as the film’s “Samurai Sword Instructor.” The fights vary wildly in length, quality and style. When McKinney takes on Conan, it feels like a failed attempt to mimic the sort of action you’d get in an 80s sword n’ sorcery movie. Some of Kenjiro’s fights feel more like a Japanese chambara film, with an emphasis on tension, economy of movement, and ending the fight in as few strokes as possible.

I’m guessing that when it came to the Asian guys, Norris just let them choreograph themselves. After all, the Chinese guy with the kwan do is played by none other than Dion Lam, who would later go onto Hollywood efforts like Spider-Man 2; Doom; and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Lam was fairly early in his action directing career at this point, having helmed the fights in films like Shanghai, Shanghai and Revenge of Angel with Moon Lee. The guy with the queue, who wields the shuangdao (twin broadswords), is played by Anthony Szeto, who would later direct and choreograph WuShu: The Young Generation. It goes without saying that the fights between Phan Xu (Szeto) and Haing Yi (Lam), and Phan Xu and Kenjiro, are the best in the film. Those fights have flashy weapons demonstrations and more complex exchanges of attacks and blocks than you would expect from an American film of this vintage.

David Bradley, unfortunately, is overshadowed by his Asian colleagues. His opening fight with the hitmen at his apartment isn’t bad by American standards. He throws some nice kicks—he trained in both Shotokan Karate and Tae Kwon Do—and does a throw or two (he also had Aikido training). His fights at the Arena of Death, however, are less intense because his character is intent on not harming his opponents where possible. So it feels like he’s holding back with his sword skills, although he does get in some decent kicks. The movie really screws the pooch in the finale, which leads me to believe that the filmmakers ran out of money during filming and had to cobble the fight together with some posing from previous fights, plus scenes of swords hitting each other up close, without knowing with which character was swinging what.

Outside of the two fights in which two Chinese guys and a Filipino dude (with a Chinese martial arts background) show us how it’s done, there isn’t much of interest in American Samurai. David Bradley’s acting is still pretty stiff, although Mark Dacascos’s overacting—this was his first major role—makes Bradley look like a thespian. The story—such as it is—is full of holes and the phoned-in love subplot results in one of the unsexier love scenes I’ve seen in a movie like this. Add to that a frequently inappropriate and cheap Cassio keyboard soundtrack and you have one of the lesser straight-to-video martial arts films of the 1990s.