Assuming that no one remembers the first three movies, they kindly give us a full recap of the story thus far at the beginning of this fourth installment. Which was good, because I’d clearly missed some detail.
While Kickboxer 3 was an improvement on the previous two, Kickboxer 4 is significantly worse, and I think they knew it when they were writing it, so they bring in the tried and tested attention grabber: boobs and a smoky sex scene. Why is the room so smoky?
It doesn’t work. No amount of skin is going to make up for the terribleness of the story.
David’s wife is kidnapped by Tong Po while David’s in jail. The only way David can get her back is to go to Tong Po’s Mexican drug-cartel compound (?!) for a contest of fights to the death. David is somehow a ninja now.
I don’t know why they couldn’t convince the original actor for Tong Po to come back, but they had to replace him with Kamil Krifa with a whole lot of poorly colour-matched skin prostheses.
The only good thing about this movie is this neck tattoo.
No good scenery. Terrible fight choreography. Dreadful soundtrack. Bad acting.
One star.
I’m past the half way mark. We’ve got 5: The Redemption next, then the two un-numbered Vengeance and Retaliation to round it out with 7 films.
Can’t wait.
