Fresh and Exciting

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The Octagon's premise is simple. Chuck Norris vs Ninjas. That's really about it. Norris is Scott James, a man haunted by memories of his growing up and rivalry with his former martial art brother Seikura, who now heads a Ninja training camp and is teaching international terrorists the ways of the Ninja. James must stop the organization and face off, once and for all, with his former brother.There's little in the way of story, and sadly the film takes it's time in getting to the point where Norris finally takes out the Ninja trash. Like a lot of his movies, the lack of much plot means the film moves pretty slowly between the action. When the action does kick in, it's quite impressive. The real standout though is Norris infiltrating the Ninja base in the film's climax. It's classic Norris.The cast are okay. Lee Van Cleef and Richard Norton pop up in small roles, Richard Norton actually has a few different roles here.I would have rated it an 8 out of 10 if there was a bit more action in the middle half of the film. For the most part, only Chuck Norris and ninja fans will get the most out of THE OCTAGON (1980).Overall worth watching..7 out of 10

The Octagon sees martial arts legend Chuck Norris taking on an organisation of ninjas, which should be awesome, but isn't.Thanks to loads of drawn-out, talkative exposition before the inevitable showdown in the ninjas' South American terrorist training camp (the Octagon of the title?), the majority of this early Norris vehicle is, to put it simply, very boring.As martial artist Scott James, Chuck is given nowhere near enough fighting to do, the character spending most of his time chatting to attractive heiress Justine (Karen Carlson), best pal A.J. (Art Hindle), and mercenary McCarn (Lee Van Cleef), while revealing his innermost thoughts to the viewer as reverberating whispers (a silly gimmick that quickly becomes very irritating).Avid martial arts movie fans will likely get a kick from the sight of genre regular Richard Norton's really bad hair, and the closing moments feature a reasonably choreographed fight between Norris and a hooded, hissing ninja, but the rest of the film is a major disappointment.

It's true that it may not appeal to martial arts movie lovers across the board because it actually has quite an involved, twisty plot and is going to be too slowly paced for some. There's not much in the way of action until the big finish. Still, for an undemanding B action picture, this viewer found the production values to be reasonably good, and there are some fine performances among the supporting cast. What lends "The Octagon" a high amount of unintentional hilarity is Chuck's overdone internal dialogue, all done with an exaggerated echo effect.Chuck stars as Scott James, a former fighter with bad memories, particularly of growing up with a hostile adoptive brother, Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita), who as an adult is now running a training camp for terrorists. A beautiful young heiress, Justine (Karen Carlson), wants revenge against Seikura because her father was one of Seikura's victims, and tries to hire Scott for her purposes. Scott isn't too happy that somebody would try to use him, and doesn't particularly want to get involved, but eventually realizes that he must.This is boosted to a degree by the engaging presence of Lee Van Cleef, who's a gas as an anti-terrorism expert / old friend of Scott's. Art Hindle ("Black Christmas" '74, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" '78) co-stars as Scott's buddy A.J., who makes a mistake in getting interested in a cause and gets in over his head. Sexy Carol Bagdasarian, daughter of composer / songwriter / actor Ross B., plays Aura, a terrorist-in-training who experiences a change of heart. Kim Lankford ("Malibu Beach") is likable during her brief screen time. B movie legend Richard Norton makes his film debut in two credited roles and several uncredited ones as faceless ninjas. (He's joked that he must have died a total of eight times in this movie.) And keep an eye out for people such as Brian Libby (whose next screen role was as Chuck's psycho nemesis in "Silent Rage"), Jack Carter, Ernie Hudson, Chuck's son Mike who plays Scott as a teenager, and an uncredited Tracey Walter.Good production design (by James L. Schoppe), cinematography (by Michel Hugo), and music (by Dick Halligan) help to make this a decent if unexceptional bit of entertainment. Chuck, as always, fares much better when kicking ass than when simply acting, but he still makes for a formidable hero. And the snarling Yamashita is a worthy bad guy. Some viewers may be amused to note how brutal the violence is at times.Overall, this is fun enough to watch.Seven out of 10.

In the least, the world of ninjitsu had been glamourized in a lot of movies. Yes, there are movies like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" , the "American Ninja" series, "3 Ninjas", and even "Beverly Hills Ninja", but "The Octagon" goes deep into the heart of these "ninjas"--mindless silent assassins who use deceptive martial arts in order to kill or maim their victims.This is how Chuck Norris uses his past competitive karate skills (away from the cinema world) to the fullest in the movie. I like how he uses his fast kicks in a scene where, upon applying to go into a ninja training camp, is forced to demonstrate his ninjitsu skills with a bunch of westerners under Doggo's supervision. In the final fight scenes, I realized that the spinning back kick and the roundhouse kick would be his biggest human weapons in the flick.Chuck Norris himself plays a former student and classmate of a ninjitsu school, who turns out to be Seikura. On a ninja training course where someone who snatches the flag on the finish line gets a chance to earn getting one of the most famous ninja weapons--the broadsword (or "katana" in Japanese), Seikura gets livid because he really wanted the broadsword. Seikura was about to kill him but then gets blocked by the ninja instructor, and the instructor considers Seikura a permanent pariah of this school and quickly expelled, telling Chuck Norris that you cannot trust him anymore--and you can consider Seikura extremely dangerous to you for the rest of your life.But the atmosphere of Seikura's ninja training camp is shocking. Here, Seikura had no choice but to run a ninja training school of his own after being outcasted...in a remote area of Central America. It is shocking that this training camp embraces and invites Westerners who are interested in being trained in ninja techniques to be used for covert international terrorist missions.Chuck now is informed that this camp is run by his student who is now dangerous...and Seikura's ninja camp is making more people dangerous upon their graduation. Chuck now realizes that to stop this continued carnage of Westerners being turned into covert international terrorists, not only does this ninja camp have to be stopped at its core--he also has to kill off Seikura himself.Of course, Chuck can't do this alone. He receives help from a female student who had graduated from the ninja camp; another student graduate from the camp called A.J., and of course...his expert martial arts wits to go past the gauntlet of plentiful ninjas in the camp who mark him for maiming and death as he infiltrated the compound.