The Octagon

Action good, not so good when actual speaking takes place
This movie comes at me a few different ways: When the action is happening, its a really good movie. When 'characters' (and I use the term loosely) are speaking, they utter some of the stiffest, most painful dialogue ever committed to celluloid. The little segments with the echoing 'whisper' are the worst; what was the point of the voice effect? 1980 movies don't have high-quality sountracks anyway, and this only serves to make it barely intelligible at times. There's many characters and plot threads brought up and dropped almost at random, and the acting is mediocre at best.

The only time it shines is the well-done martial arts sequences (many done with a minimum of cutting), which almost make it worth suffering through. The ending fight in particular is very nice, almost balletic in spots. A shame they couldn't have hired a screenwriter without a tin ear and possessing a sense of pace and structure.

[Three-and-a-half stars out of four] One of Chuck Nossis best ever!
Norris, Karen Carlson and Lee Van

Cleef are outstanding in this sort

of Martial Arts / Revenge modern day

tale, which crosses over several genres!

Van Cleef fans will especially love it.

Some dialog is sort of silly in here as

one guy in Martial Arts camp calls an

oriental a 'bleedin' NAZI'?! Dumb line...

One of the Best
Next to An Eye for An Eye this is probably his best movie.

Chuck Norris goes to a ninja traning camp that is training terroists to be the dark assisins. He ends up running into his long lost adopted brother, shikura, and fighting him to the death.

There are a ton of great fight scenes in this film, but the acting leaves a lot to be desired. If you like martial arts and great action scenes you'll enjoy this film.

Rich

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