I remember watching this movie when it first came out many years ago on video and loved it, basically elimination tournament with weapons. Bloodsport essentially. You have the Samurai character badly and uncomfortably played by David Bradley. I say badly because he is so uptight the entire movie. Maybe he was worried about Mark Dacascos upstaging him, should be he does. Anyways this is more a message about the region 2 DVD, please don't buy it. It is cut to the point of being a PG. Sincerely this movie is poleaxed by the censors. If you want to watch Mark Dacascos in his element acting superbly please watch this otherwise find the uncut version.

this one might be a little tricky because it only shows a run time of 94 minutes and no other version so I'm not sure if that is the uncut version or if there is a shorter or longer version, in any case I've personally seen 2 versions of this movie, one is a great underground hostel type battle to the death gory hack and slash movie and the other is so watered down that it becomes a cheesy Bloodsport clone with death battles in it but with barely any blood and no gore, this movie is a perfect example of what some good old fashioned latex gore effects can do to increase the overall value of the film, it's a movie that could very easily been done as a PG-13 and yet, they knew what they had was a sub product that was limited by it's budget from the opening bell so they invested well where it could distinguish itself from all those American Ninja Crap movies, don't even get me started on those, to this day I've never understood why there was so many sequels of American Ninja, those and the Madea (A Big Dude In Drag) movies are a real head scratch-er, they were all bad and just got keep getting worse, anyways back to American Samurai uncut, it had really good fight scenes, the acting was good enough for what this is, and the Gore was superb, it's not the kind of Gore that you wouldn't normally see in a rated R movie back then, it's more of the Hard R variety or Unrated equivalent back in 1992 so I can see why there is a cut version of the movie but that version royally sucks, the uncut is really good, you'll know right off the bat what version you are watching with the graphic extraction of a bullet near the beginning, do yourself a favor and watch this gory little gem, it's what Mortal Kombat should be gore wise

Yeah it really is that bad. It certainly made me want to vomit at the stupidity. Especially that scene where David Bradley removed the bullet from his gut to show how tough he was. The fight scenes are semi decent, but the plot, romantic subplot, and overacted characters are extremely stupid, and most unforgivably of all, boring. Avoid at all costs.

Having all but exhausted the exploitation of ninjas, what was Cannon to do? Right - exploit samurais instead! As well as recycle elements from their past hit BLOODSPORT, including a big burly guy with a beard as one of the contestants! It's clear the movie was cut for an "R" rating, given how some wounds and killings are not shown as clearly as you would think, but the editing also shows signs of production problems. One lengthy scene seems to have been cut in half, with the subsequent half played much later in the movie. There is also awkward narration and a very long sex scene where you never see the faces of the lovers, furthering the suspicion of frantic efforts to patch together the movie. The production values are pretty good, and Firstenberg does deliver the goods with the fight sequences, which are expertly choreographed. He doesn't do well with the actors however, having Dacascos overact at times and Bradley giving yet another uncharismatic performance.

Okay, so it was never going to get an Oscar, but consider this movie's merits for what it is ¡V a low budget film trying to ride out on the ¡§fame¡¨ of a B grade star with Ninja hype. Take that away and what you have is an innovative late 80s early 90s martial arts flick that managed to repackage the ¡§Blood Sports¡¨ idea using (some) extremely talented actors. I watched this video as part of my research on a new director, Tony Szeto. I was amazed by the fight scenes that involved Mark Dacascos (Kenjiro) and Tony Szeto (Phan-Xu). Even with the dismal fight between Dacascos and a hopeless Bradely (Drew), the close-ups reveal a telling red flag ¡V obviously the close-ups of the previous fight between Dacascos and Szeto. Realize that, barring the slow motion, all fighting was done in real time. That is, there was no motion speed-up as often used in Hong Kong kung-fu films. I don't know about the rumors that they used actual weapons (blunted of course), but I have an article from an Israeli newspaper that says one of the actors were injured by a weapon while shooting one of the fight scenes. With ¡§Brotherhood of the Wolf (2002)¡¨, it is surely only a matter of time before Dacascos hits the A-list in Hollywood. But with the knowledge that much of the martial arts choreography was done by Tony Szeto, I'm looking forward to seeing his directorial debut in ¡§DragonBlade (2003)¡¨, which apparently will be packed full of martial arts weaponry.

American Samurai fits into a genre of cinema that enjoyed far to short lived a success, that being the underground, martial arts death tournament film. Films like this enjoyed a great boom in the eighties and early nineties and arguably were the influences for the modern fighting tournament games such as Street Fighter 2 and the like. Some other films of this genre are "Ring of Steel", "Best of the Best 2", "Blood Fist 2" and perhaps one of the last of these magnificent creatures to appear in theater; John Claude VanDam's "The Quest"... unless of course you count the more recent "Fight Club", which you shouldn't because it's not about underground martial arts guys that fight but just normal guys and that isn't the main plot of the film anyway really. As evident from the title this film also belongs to the school of sticking the word American in front of stuff IE: American Ninja's 1 through 4, American Ronin and American Cyborg. this usually means you have an instant classic on your hands. Anyway what really makes the film shine is the cast of characters. American Samurai offers more weird fighters than any other film of the genre that I have yet seen. If nothing else it would make a great video game. I will attempt to catalogue the assortment of fighters in the style of a badly translated Nintendo instruction booklet. The American Samurai: A warrior of much honor though American, trained by master Samurai in Mountains of Japan. Master of Sword and peaceful of heart but strong to win. Entered tournament to reclaim family sword from evil brother. His Yakuza Samurai Brother: Adoptive brother of American Samurai and son of Master Samurai. Strong fighter but gangster with no honor or mercy too. The Bowie Knife Cowboy: American fighter, fast with knife although quite stupid. Fights in tournament for much cash prizes and honor. African Master of the Quarter Staff: Not much known about this fighter. likes to strike poses with his staff weapon. Pirate Swordsman: A much feared prate from the coast of far off lands. Wears eye patch but is still dangerous. The Deadly Braid: Much like fighter in "Best of the Best 2" he fights with sharp implement tied to his long braid of hair. Born in China he possess much fighting spirit. Chinese Axe Spear Guy: Second warrior from china and master of martial arts axe spear technique. Fast warrior but uses much energy in attacks. Conan the Barbarian Guy: Former stunt man of lame 80's European sword and sorcery/caveman movie genre gone renegade. Now looks for new career wielding broadsword for money and glory in tournament. Nordic, Viking, Berserker Type: Crazy Horned warrior from Sweden. Attacks fierce with axe. Weird-ass, Klingon Sword Looking Thing Wielding Guy: Warrior killed by Evil Yakuza Brother. Fought with weird-ass star trek, alien weapon things. I know there wear a few guys I've forgotten too. Oh yeah this film also features John Fujioka playing the Japanese martial arts master who raises and trains our hero upon finding him stranded in his infancy. This is the exact same role he played in American Ninja. "I only play old Japanese Guys that find American babies and raise them to be martial arts masters". Now that's over specific type casting if you ask me. Anyway the film is also peppered with blindfolded swordsman training sequences, lots of crazy fighting and flash backs to really bad wise old sensei advice. In short this movie rocks. There should be more films like this. I'd comment on the film's success at creating one of the most awkward romantic subplots ever but I think I've run out of space. See it yourself.

David Bradley stars as Drew, An American samurai who has incured the wrath of his step-brother by earning his father's sword. Of course years later the brother Kenjiro (Mark Dacascos) is a yakuza mob boss and Drew now a journalist, Kenjiro forces Drew back in a to the death weapons tournament in this martial arts actioner which pretty much delivers what you would expect. (Which is to say not much.) The plot is stolen from the Chuck Norris starred dud Octagon and although this is slightly better, American Samurai suffers from Bradley's lack of charisma and Dacascos is far too over the top to take seriously. Some brutal yet satisfying action abound to make this go down easier. 2/5 Matt Bronson Review brought to you courtesy from Spike TV and their midnight airing.

The first time I saw this movie, I was much younger than I am today and I thought that it was a decent movie with awesome fight scenes. But when I watched it a few years later I realized something...it's crap. As I watched I came under the realization that the editors had no idea what they were doing. Scenes conflicted with each other. For example, at one time you see this blond fighter get his leg hacked to pieces only to see him with a perfect leg, no scratches or bruises, just a few minutes later (24 hours according to the movie). What was the worst of all was the final fight scene. It is totally obvious that all the makers of this movie did was just take previous scenes and meshed them all together. It wouldn't have been that obvious if it wasn't for the fact that the main character kept changing uniforms every 5 seconds, the guy he kept fighting changed as well, and for the horrible dubbing they did to make the previous scenes fit. Avoid this movie at all cost. I have seen some bad martial arts movies in my time, but they were always enjoyable. This one is just plain bad and should probably only be seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000 to be heckled at.

I first saw this movie when I was in 8th grade. A friend invited me and a couple of friends to his house after school to see American Samurai on video. The movie lacked of some elements like acting, and editing but we all agree on one thing, the movie had impressive sword fighting scenes. The movie was release by the time the fighting Games where at there higher point. It follows a sequence of low budget films related to competition fighting in the eighties and early nineties like; Bloodsport, Kickboxing, Shootfighter, and American Ninja. The story begins when an American couple and there son are traveling on a privet plane, that crashes nearby an isolated part of Japan. An old Japanese swords man finds the boy that is the only survivor and takes him as his own, and trains him in the Samurai ways. A few years later his other son Kenjiro (played by Mark Dacascos) joins the Yakuza mafia and is disowned by his father. Kenjiro steals the family Katana so he can use it in gladiatorial fights that take place in a Turkish arena. Andrew Collins (played by David Bradley) is set to find the sword of his adopted father. On his way he meets with Janet (played by Valarie Trapp) and falls in love with her. Janet is kidnapped by Kenjiro and forces Andrew to fight in the arena. Soon Andrew is faced against fearless fighters from around the world, and that the fights are to the death. The only way to survive is by using his Samurai techniques. Mark Dacascos performance as the villain is great, and the fighting scenes are phenomenal. The concept of armed combat is what really made this film unique at the time. So if you want to see a classic martial arts movie, this you will definitely enjoy.

In the movie the best part of the movie was Mark Dacascos as Kenjiro. I found the movie's lead actor to be very stiff and boring. Mark Dacascos was the only young actor that was worth watching. I only watched when he was on the screen. I think that he was great.