Talk to any martial artist about movies and actors, and they will likely mention American Ninja and the leading actor, Michael Dudikoff.

Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) is a new arrival at a U.S. Army base in the Philippines, where military convoys are being hijacked by rebels. The Army has standing orders to not instigate any incidents with the rebels.

Joe's first assignment is to drive a truck in a convoy that is attacked by the rebels. The colonel's daughter is traveling with them and Joe tries to save her. Several soldiers are injured or killed, and Joe gets blamed by everybody for the trouble.

The colonel pulls Joe's records and learns that he was found unconscious on an island in the Pacific by a construction crew. A blast had knocked him out and when he woke, he had total amnesia. His record shows that he was in and out of foster homes and getting into trouble for six years before a judge gave him the choice of jail or the military.

The base martial arts instructor, Curtis Jackson (Steve James) decides to teach Joe a lesson about trying to be bad. After a humiliating fight, Jackson decides that, perhaps, Joe just might be bad. He also decides he would rather be friends than enemies with this man. The duo make one lean, mean fighting machine as they try to clean up the base and rid the area of the hijackers.

I like Dudikoff and James as actors. They play the military roles extremely well and are par-to-the-course for martial artists who are soldiers, and for soldiers who are martial artists. Go on any military base and you will see these exact characters in real life. They will simply have different faces, but they will act exactly like these two do. So they are credible to the max with their acting.

The photography is good throughout almost the entire movie. It gets a little zippy during one of the action scenes, but considering how much action there is, I suppose that is not a major problem. The rest of the movie more than compensates for that one little flaw.

The writing is outstanding. Joe's story is fascinating, and there is always a sense of mystery about him, no matter how well you know him (and if you watch all the sequels to this movie -- a total of four -- you will come to know Joe quite well). For many households, Joe is quite the American hero because he's just an ordinary guy trying to get by in the world, but always managing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Trouble is definitely attracted to Joe.

American Ninja is absolutely predictable and, like so many of our action movies, our hero can sometimes run through a wall of bullets from machine guns and not get the tiniest scratch. Still, it is a decent action flick with some fantastic military-style (anything is a weapon) martial arts moves. It is certain to remain a "martial arts classic" among the discipline.