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Released
1985 · FILM

American Ninja

A tough, street-smart drifter turned army enlistee must use his martial arts skills to stop rebels and rescue the kidnapped colonel during a deadly ambush in the Philippines.

The deadliest art of the Orient is now in the hands of an American.

Directed by
Runtime
95 min
ActionAdventureRomance

Synopsis

Joe Armstrong, an orphaned drifter with little respect for anything other than martial arts, is sent to an American Army base in the Philippines after a judge offers him the choice of enlistment or prison. On one of his first assignments driving a convoy, his platoon is attacked by a group of rebels seeking to steal the weapons being transported and to kidnap the base colonel.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 26

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Andy HorvitchShot by Hanania BaerScored by Michael LinnDesigned by Adrian Gorton

Box Office

1985 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 10× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$10.5M

Budget$1.0M
Worldwide gross$10.5M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • American Fighterde
  • American Warriorfr
  • Guerriero americanoit

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