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Reviews
Stranded (2002)
Painful to watch.
Rented this tonite from my local video store. It was titled "Black Horizon." I guess someone felt this was good enough for a 2004 re-release...
Micheal Dudikoff is unfortunetly not a ninja in this movie, one of the major flaws of this film right off the bat. Another major flaw would be that Ice-t's action scenes are stolen from other movies, particularly the first scene of his rescue, which is directly from the Wesley Snipes movie "The Art of War," with Ice-T edited in. I hope they paid for that footage.
The plot is awful, the special effects had little effort put into them (love those wires holding them in space), the acting is wooden (also love those New York/Russian accents). Ice-T being in the movie is pointless. These guys also forgot the fact that there is no gravity in space, but I guess they weren't worried about it.
Micheal Dudikoff should go back to doing what he's "good" at and make American Ninja 6.
American Ninja 5 (1993)
They took the name and an actor, but that's it.
I hate this movie. It has absolutely nothing to do with any of the other American Ninja movies. It still has the mindless, bumbling ninjas that attack the star in usually poorly choreographed fight scenes, except now everything has been toned down for PG-13, smarmy, Kodak moment/comedic schtick.
David Bradley should be ashamed of himself. He is not cast as "Joe Armstrong" of the other movies, but as "Joe Kastle." An entirely new character that had nothing to do with any of the other movies. Not as "Sean Davidson," his previously dopey character. Did the writers think that we wouldn't notice this?
Most of the young Reyes kid's stunts are done by a big fat white guy stuntman. The reason I know this is because the camera makes it painfully obvious every time. The dialogue is corny, and David Bradley's comedic lines are absolutely wretched. The plot almost exactly mirrors part 2's plot: Mean rich guy with an accent that deals with other evil rich guys with accents has a "brilliant" scientist (with an accent) working for him to make some super chemical that will allow him to rule the world. Scientist with accent cannot quit or runaway because mean rich boss with accent has kidnapped his daughter (who does NOT have an accent.) American Ninja gets wrapped up in this fiasco by incredible luck and circumstances.
The "Super Ninja" of this movie is a vampire looking guy (James Lew) that farts everytime he appears or disappears. Pat Morita rounds out the cast in three scenes where his presence is entirely useless to the plot.
Most importantly, this movie suffers the most from one very large flaw, just like part 3: Micheal Dudikoff's entirely unemotive acting and hilarious fight sequences are not present. Thank Goodness he had the smarts to end it with part 4.
Gigli (2003)
Worse than Manos?
Well, technically no. This movie had a budget and A-list actors. They had a crew, a production team, writers, proper lighting, editing...you know, things that go into making a movie nowadays. But see, even Manos has things happen in it, there is a slight resemblance of something that could be called a story. There is resolution at the end, although rather abrupt, cliche, and really gross (why would the master need a 6 year old wife?), but Gigli has none of these things. Manos was made almost 40 years ago on a bet by a fertilizer salesmen. Manos had an excuse. This, as Al Pacino tells us in his normal Al Pacino acting bravado during Gigli, is the twenty f*cking first century. There is no excuse for this kind of crap to be passed off as a major hollywood movie. Maybe at the Summer Indie Rainbow Film festival with the German film featuring a boy running through the forest and multiple shots of a bucket of water that symbolizes somehow that we need to throw out our computers and be one with nature, but not as a major Hollywood release. Watching this movie is like being tied to a truck with your hands duct taped behind your back while the driver speeds through a gravel parking lot.