Sorry, this movie sucks

How sad is this?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I just bought a DVD player, and this was one of the free movies thoughtfully supplied with it. Very interesting movie with a young 20 year old Nicole Kidman playing Robby's girlfriend Amy Gabriel who caught on to Steve early in the movie when she saw him and Guy exchanging money for drugs and it almost cost her life for finding that out. The real star in the movie is Tom Jennings who was both strong and sensitive, what ever happened to him?, in his part of Robby Madson. In the end Robby had to face the truth, as well as the fists and kicks, of the person he looked up to for so long. Robby battles Steve in the abandoned warehouse that he and Steve's students practice on their Ninja/Karate skills that Steve thought them at the end of the film. The movie is hard to follow due to the very dark photography in it making it very difficult to tell who's who in the very thrilling fight sequence between Robby and Steve at the conclusion of the film but if you give it a chance and overlook that you may very well like it.

***SPOILERS*** Futueristic movie about a number of Austrailien collage students playing Ninja games all night then attending karate/physical classes at 5:AM and by the time they go to their regular classes are too knocked out to really learn anything. Their karate instructor Steve Beck, Vince Martin,has a very strong grip on the students to the point of almost killing themselves in their Ninja night games to impress him. Steve's best student and his biggest admirer is young Robby Mason, Tom Jennings, who Steve is guiding to the champion karate/boxing finals.A very impressionable young man Robby lost his father at an early age and Steve was the perfect father-figure that he needed so badly at this time. One of Robby's teachers Sonia Spane, Joanne Samuel,is very concerned by her students, especially Robby, being so infatuated with Steve. Sonia knows some things about Steve, by being his former lover, that they don't and those thing can be fatal to both the students as well as Steve.A highly decorated war veteran Steve is the only survivor of his army unit and has developed very deep emotional as well as psychical scares to the point where he can show no human feelings other then anger and violence to hide the fact he was the only one to survive. Steve put all this violence and aggression into his karate/boxing classes and Sonia sees that those students who are so impressed by Steve are slowly turning into the violent and brutal person that Steve is. Steve also developed a drug habit in the army and is being supplied with his daily dose by local drug dealer and all around sleaze ball Guy Duncan, Craig Pearce, who also is blackmailing him. Sonia trying to get Robby away from Steve before he's caught up with Steve's secret life that can destroy him as well as Steve. As hard as she tries Sonia can't budge Robby away from his hero worshiping of Steve and it took an incident the night of the big karate/boxing Champiship that Robby was to participate in that finally open his eyes to just what kind of person Steve really is.Very interesting movie with a young 20 year old Nicole Kidman playing Robby's girlfriend Amy Gabriel who caught on to Steve early in the movie when she saw him and Guy exchanging money for drugs and it almost cost her life for finding that out. The real star in the movie is Tom Jennings who was both strong and sensitive, what ever happened to him?, in his part of Robby Madson. In the end Robby had to face the truth, as well as the fists and kicks, of the person he looked up to for so long. Robby battles Steve in the abandoned warehouse that he and Steve's students practice on their Ninja/Karate skills that Steve thought them at the end of the film. The movie is hard to follow due to the very dark photography in it making it very difficult to tell who's who in the very thrilling fight sequence between Robby and Steve at the conclusion of the film but if you give it a chance and overlook that you may very well like it.

This one makes more sense than most Ninja movies, but that's not saying much is it? A fun one if you like the bad movies.Actually, the Australian Teenage Movie has become one of my favorite bad movie genres. OK, we got kids involved in dangerous secret stuff at night, but also involved with "good" activities at school. Of course there's a caring female teacher who reaches out to help a troubled young man (and the ensuing titillation). And we must also have the bad mentor, showing the kids the wrong way.Best of all, Nicole Kidman running around in a dark factory in a Ninja suit! Also hysterical is the way they keep referring to the frumpy schoolteacher as a real looker! Wait till she shows up on her motorcycle. Also featuring painful 80's rock at local club, and sudden dream sequences.The pacing of this movie is pretty good, and with a little more care, could have been a better film. Nonetheless very entertaining. If you like this, you'll gotta see the Aussie teen flick, Street Hero.

Really a shame, poor direction ruined what could have been a far better film. Solid, believable performances from a very young Nicole Kidman and a fine martial-arts actor, Tom Jennings, just aren't enough to save this. The screenplay didn't quite realize the basic concept of a bunch of older kids staying up all night to play Ninja war games in an abandoned power plant, much to the neglect of their school work. It was, to say the least, a bit muddled. There were some good futuristic elements thrown in, but not convincingly enough to play true. As to what year of school these "kids" were in, it's hard to guess. They're clearly too mature for an American high school, but then again, it's an Australian movie, set in the future.With better editing, this movie could have been a bit more watchable, but I suspect there just wasn't enough footage shot that the editor had much choice. Some sequences were reused in pointless mini-flashbacks that really didn't belong in the film. This makes me wonder if it wasn't being padded to play on television. And the director just didn't seem to be able to tell a story. He did frame the occasional dramatic picture, but not often enough to achieve the artsy effect I think he was going for. Besides, without being able to accomplish the basics, you should be careful with the frills.However, it's a treat to see the young Kidman. Despite the bad direction, muddled script, all the martial arts sequences executed in the dark, and her thick Australian accent, you can see what everyone saw in her, even then. Tom Jennings wasn't bad either, seemed to show a lot of potential, but I wonder what happened to him. According to IMDB, he made one more movie in '88 and then dropped out of sight.I wouldn't recommend you go out of your way to see this one, but it lapsed into the public domain and is available very cheaply from a number of sources. I can only think of two reasons to see this: 1) You're a die-hard Kidman fan who would watch ANYTHING if she was in it, or 2) You're lazy and dishonest and looking for an obscure script to recycle for a student film project.