Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Worst Ninja movie Ever. I was feeling pretty good about myself because I had come from the theater a few days prior and had watched an enjoyed ‘Ninja Assassin’ and the next day I check my mail to see that the Straight to DVD movie ‘Ninja’ was waiting to be watched, which was also enjoyable. So why not dig into the archives and pull out one my 1980 ‘White Guy Ninja’ flicks, this one being ‘The Ninja Mission’ out of Sweden of all places and just get my ninja totally on. So while Sweden may be cool for supplying the world with 80’s pop music groups, safe boxy automobiles and beautiful wives for unfaithful golfers I have learned that Sweden lags behind considerably when it comes to providing us with entertaining White Guy Ninja movies.
Club Pop star Nadia (Hanna Pola) is minding her own damn business when she finds herself being chased down the street by the KGB. As it turns out these KGB agents are going to need this woman for something which will cause us to question why they are shooting at her, but we’ll let that slide. Fortunately for Nadia she is being surveyed by a smooth operating CIA Agent / Ninja named Mason (Krzysztof Kolberger) who swoops up homegirl, takes her to a ninja trap and he and his Ninja Team totally kicks the assess of those lousy KGB agents.
The story is that Nadia’s old man, a super scientist of sorts, defected to Russia some years ago but now he’s on the verge of some major energy breakthrough, but he refuses to give it to the Ruskies because that would shift the power of the world and cause WWIII. Can’t have that. One of this old mans stipulations for providing this hot new tech to the west would be securing the safety of his estranged daughter so he can see her once again. No easier way to protect this woman than allowing her to go to a crowded night club and allowing her to sing her crap pop music.
No sooner than you can say ‘shootout at a Swedish Night Club’ Nadia is snatched up despite Mason’s best attempts, and scurried away to Russia where she and her old man are tricked into believing they are still in Sweden. Now Mason and his team of Ninja’s have to infiltrate the Russian border, retrieve the scientist and his daughter, retrieve this hot new technology, kill up a bunch of commie bastards and then blow up the commie bastard hideout while safely making it back to the safe confines of Sweden. On paper all of that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Man, if we’re giving out grades for effort, Mat Helge’s movie ‘The Ninja Mission’ gets an A+. There’s enough action in this flick for three movies, this was 1984 so we got us a leading man in the Don Johnson / Sonny Crockett mode complete with razor stubble and there was even a little skin tossed in for good measure. But despite the goo gobs of action, I mean its pretty much non-stop, it’s like the worst filmed action ever. I never thought I’d see a movie with car chases and shootouts and fist fights and exploding Swedish brains and torture that could be so gosh darned boring, forcing one to try desperately to stay awake.
Then there was the little issue of our Ninja’s in this movie calling itself ‘The Ninja Mission’. Now I don’t how the Ninja operate in Sweden but I’ve always been led to believe that Ninja tended to be really good martial artist in addition to being real stealth like but these ninja kind of broke the mold on that one. This crew of ninja didn’t seem to be all that accomplished as martial artist with their knee high round house kicks and all, but I will say they were pretty handy with the steel. And by steel I don’t mean throwing stars and nunchucks and the traditional ninja stuff that we’re used to, but machine guns and pistols. Sure machine guns and pistols make a lot of noise which kind of throws a wrench in the whole ninja stealth mystique, but waddayagonnado? Yeah they could sneak up on you and snap your neck or they could just pick up this gun and blast you all to hell. I guess in the grand scheme of things it really didn’t matter to me how they kilted you up. I particularly liked the scene where our chief Ninja was talking to some dude while hordes of soldiers were clacking down the stairs with guns to capture him. I’m thinking this ‘ninja’ would’ve heard them clacking down the stairs and then turned around and do some wicked ninja stuff on their ass, but I would be wrong as his sensei apparently didn’t train my man on the subtle art of ‘listening’. They just take this ‘ninja’ and tie him up. What kind of ninja is this? Dudikoff would NEVER allow that to happen.
The only real good thing about ‘The Ninja Mission’ is that it did harken back to a simpler time where dudes walked around with their blazer sleeves rolled up and women had big hair and wore leg warmers even when it was warm outside. Something you can easily get by scrolling past VH-1. Personally I’ll stick with ‘American Ninja’ when I feel the need for my 1980’s white guy ninja fix coming on.
