The last twenty minutes of The Octagon are amongst the most impressive you’ll find in a martial arts movie. A heady mix of astonishing fight sequences, non-stop action, genuine tension and moody visuals, you watch and immediately understand how ninjas went from an obscure Japanese myth to become the dominant action movie bad guys throughout the 1980s, all thanks to this film.

The problem is that in order to reach this sequence, you have to wade through about 80 minutes of often incoherent plotting, performed by some of the worst actors you’ll ever see. Seriously – when Chuck Norris is the best performer in a film, you know you’re in trouble. But that’s the case here – even the usually reliable Lee Van Cleef sleepwalks through a non-role.

Norris plays Sam James, ex martial arts champion haunted by memories that are never fully developed, despite a continual inner monologue that sounds more like the sinister whispering of a giallo villain than the thoughts of a movie hero. When a dancer he has picked up is killed by ninjas – long thought as extinct as the Dodo – he finds himself drawn into a mystery that involves hired killers, right-wing extremists, terrorist training camps and a wealthy heiress (Karen Carlson) who is determined to bring him back into his old life through a combination of clumsy seduction and the worst dialogue delivery I’ve ever seen.

Norris spends most of the film looking confused, and with good reason, as the story makes very little sense, and the characters are too one-dimensional and under-developed to draw you in. Lots of things happen, but it doesn’t really hang together, and character motivation is vague to say the least. You get the impression that there was a long back-story for everyone in the writer’s head that wasn’t shared with anyone else.

Te resulting film is a bit of a mess, frankly. That final act is worth sticking around for – or perhaps skipping ahead to – and goes a long way to salvaging the movie. But on the whole, this is pretty ham-fisted stuff.

The new Blu-ray, however, does its best to make this is worthwhile package, with a thorough ‘making-of’ retrospective and director commentary. Whether that’s enough to tip the balance I’ll leave up to you.

DAVID FLINT

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