On a remote Caribbean island, Army Ranger Joe Armstrong saves an old friend from the clutches of "The Lion", an evil super-criminal who has kidnapped a local scientist and mass-produced an army of mutant Ninja warriors.
Script by actors Gary Conway (who plays the narcotics overlord) and James Booth trades heavily upon the notion of Americans inherent mental and physical superiority to native warriors, who are a dime a dozen, but in such a comic way that the viewer can laugh with it rather than at it.
In the Cannon Films esthetic, the only good Ninja is a dead Ninja, and the bodies certainly fly fast and furious here. Okay, it's silly, but maybe you were expecting Tess of the D'Ubervilles? And from a director named Sam Firstenberg?
Sam Firstenberg--a decent enough action director who's shepherded along three previous ninja movies--here has a story so preposterous that nothing short of a mutiny could make the movie work.
38
Chicago Tribune
Unnamed
It has a charming actor named Scott James as Joe's buddy, Curtis Jackson. And it still has smartly produced scenes of black-clad ninja performing sleights of hand, foot, spear, dart, knife, chain and scimitar. What it doesn't have is a shred of originality. [07 May 1987, p.13A]