In 2019 I celebrated “Ninjanuary” with several posts about the ninja in popular culture, particularly in films and books from the 1980s, and I occasionally return to that theme. Past entries can be found by clicking on the Ninjanuary tag.

Can we ever escape the 1980s? In the case of movies with the word “ninja” in the title, probably not (this series is proof of that). Even in 1998, The Wedding Singer conjured up an MTV-era fantasy with a distinct candy-colored look, an exercise in nostalgia for an era not even two decades past, a Grease for Generation X. As we have moved farther in time from that decade, media basking in “’80s-ness” has become more and more baroque: Vaporwave fantasies inspired by movies (of the blockbuster and Blockbuster variety), comics, and video games that were already exaggerated reflections of a complex, fast-changing world.

Commando Ninja (Ben Combes, 2018) wears its influences from the title on down: the ninja action is largely of the Cannon Films/Golan-Globus variety, with some overt homages to Godfrey Ho, and the Commando part acknowledges the Schwarzenegger/Stallone wing of ‘80s action cinema, down to the obsession with the Vietnam War and those who survived it. It’s also apparent that as the generation who were children in the 1980s (or for whom it was before their time) have grown up to create their own art, the “toy commercial” cartoon shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers have turned out to be just as enduring and influential as Back to the Future or Pretty in Pink.

Beyond the passage of time, the internet and meme-ification of pop culture is probably also to blame. Commando Ninja, like Kung Fury, was a Kickstarter-funded project, and like many crowdfunded movies, it feels like it’s deliberately pitched to the Reddit crowd who are most likely to be online to hear about it in the first place. In addition to the obvious, Commando Ninja riffs on such period touchstones as Home Alone, the Mad Max series, the films of Andy Sidaris, 8-bit video games, and Jurassic Park. (Okay, that’s from the ‘90s, but there’s always room for dinosaurs in something like this: what I recently said about “comics FUN” also applies to self-consciously pulpy movies.) I started Commando Ninja feeling that it was at least more grounded than Kung Fury, but by the end I wouldn’t even say that. 

The plot of Commando Ninja flashes back and forth between 1968 and 1986 (always helpfully announcing when and where a scene takes place with title cards). It begins with a platoon of American G.I.s wading through a Vietnam delta, trading wisecracks and wary guesses about what they’re up against. They’re a diverse group, stereotypically so: the black guy is nicknamed “Snow White,” and another soldier is named “Kowalsky,” and there’s a “lovable” racist with a Confederate flag stitched to his camos. We see them from above through thermal imaging as warm red blobs, just like in Predator. When the unseen antagonist is revealed, it is a red-clad ninja with a golden facemask who can literally become invisible (again, much like the Predator). After a surprise attack, black-clad ninja henchmen finish the job of killing some of the soldiers and corralling the survivors, including hero John Hunter (Eric Carlesi).

Flashing forward to 1986, Hunter’s ex-wife is murdered at her front door by a very Terminator-like pizza delivery man, and his tween daughter nearly escapes from a pair of bumbling ninjas by means of homemade booby traps. But she hadn’t counted on the Terminator dude being invulnerable to being hit in the nuts, and he catches her. Hunter, contentedly chopping wood in a remote cabin in Canada, is approached by an Air Force official: Leeroy Hopkins (Philippe Allier), the redneck we last saw getting his arm blown off in Vietnam, now outfitted with a cybernetic replacement. He has good news and bad news: Hunter’s ex-wife is dead, and the bad news is that his daughter has been kidnapped.

It’s hard to tell how invested writer-director Ben Combes is in recreating the nastier edge that was often present in ‘80s action movies, whether he’s reveling in the perceived freedom to not be “politically correct,” or if he’s ironically pointing out the racism and misogyny baked into their premises. Ultimately, it’s not my problem, but Combes was invested enough in the side character Hopkins to give him a Taxi Driver-style prequel short that explains how he went from disabled Vietnam Vet to Air Force cyborg, and it involves slaughtering a ring of murderous Viet Cong guerillas in 1970s New York City.

Or perhaps it is a matter of perspective: although made in English, Commando Ninja was a French production. Kung Fury was made in Sweden. The post-apocalyptic ‘80s pastiche Turbo Kid was made in Canada. That isn’t to say that Americans don’t also tell these stories, but the non-domestic versions are often markedly weird, like a copy of a copy. Is this what the United States, filtered through the media we export, looks like to the rest of the world? I’ll admit that absurd macho posturing is a big part of our national brand, especially now.

In any case, John Hunter, Commando Ninja, springs into action, tracing his daughter’s kidnapper to his old nemesis, Kinsky (Olivier Dobremel), who was working with the Soviets in 1968 but now appears to be an independent crimelord with his own army of ninjas at his disposal. He chills at his luxurious mansion in a fictional Central American country, surrounded by bodyguards and beautiful women in bikinis, and has apparently arranged the kidnapping to extort Hunter into doing his dirty work. Kinsky is pointedly Jewish: make of that what you will. (There are some nice touches in these sequences, like the Garfield phone Kinsky uses to communicate with his henchmen, and the varied uses of the Nintendo Power Glove to represent high-tech gadgets.)

Things don’t go according to Kinsky’s plan, and along the way, Hunter recalls the imprisonment he suffered in Vietnam at Kinsky’s hands, and the means of escape he was given by a sympathetic Chinese Colonel (Thyra Hann Phonephet) who introduced him to martial arts and the path of the Commando Ninja. (Other questions answered by flashbacks include the sad story of Kowalsky, the soldier-turned-Terminator whose brain was replaced with a “powerful four-megahertz processor.”) Of course, Hunter uses the lessons he learned from his sensei to defeat his old enemy the red ninja, and then things really get weird.

The criticisms I have may make it sound like I didn’t enjoy Commando Ninja, but for what it is, I was entertained and even laughed out loud sometimes. Carlesi has the physique and demeanor of an original ‘80s action hero, and while much of the violence is played for laughs, with exaggerated blood squibs and exploding dummies, the hand-to-hand combat sequences are effective. The music convincingly evokes John Carpenter and Kenny Loggins to get the audience pumped up. There are more real location shots than you might expect, with greenscreen and CGI reserved for the really outlandish scenes. It also moves briskly and doesn’t wear out its welcome, coming in at under 70 minutes. But if you’re left wanting more—and the film does end on a cliffhanger—Commando Ninja is just the beginning of a burgeoning franchise: in addition to the aforementioned short Hopkins, a full-length sequel was completed last year and there’s also a prequel comic book. As of this writing, Commando Ninja is available to watch on YouTube.