American Ninja 4 is the (almost) final movie in the American Ninja franchise of movies, and one of the final movies released by Cannon Films (which also released the "Ninja trilogy" in the early 1980s, along with a string of low-budget movies and the disastrous Superman IV.)
This movie was released in 1990 and brought Michael Dudikoff back into the franchise, having his character "Joe Armstrong" team up with David Bradley's character Sean Davidson. I think the studio was probably trying to recapture the magic of the first movie, which was an unexpected low-budget hit in 1985, but ended up just making a movie that was even worse than the awful American Ninja 3. The plot basically cherry-picks elements of the first three movies, adds a couple of twists to the rich bad guy part of the plot, and sprinkles in a bit of "Mad Max" dystopian renegades. And, much to Michael Dudikoff's disappointment, did not bring back Steve James to reprise his character, which if you watch the making-of featurette, was a conscious decision by the producers not because James turned them down. Needless to say, that combination did not work. The fight scenes are awful, and the "main" evil ninja is a white guy with an eye patch. He is not even remotely threatening, and the henchman ninjas are totally pathetic, like killing themselves on an obstacle course pathetic.
The movie clocks in at just over an hour and a half, which is a similar running time to the other movies in the franchise. The A/V transfer of the blu-ray is good, but not great. About what you would expect of a low-budget early 90s movie. For extras, there is a 15-minute making-of featurette that was produced in 2016 and is mostly a conversation with the director of the movie, Cedric Sundstrom, a music video that has clips from each of the four movies set to a bad 80s song, and the theatrical trailer. This is basically the final movie in the series because, while American Ninja 5 was made with David Bradley as the star, he played a completely different character, and Dudikoff did not return for that one.
This is a movie that you have to take for what it is, a bad, low-budget action movie with bad acting and writing. It is basically something you would get just to keep a collection complete, and maybe watch if you are in the mood for a cheesy action movie.
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