The best Kickboxer movie yet! Which isn’t saying a whole lot.
David and Xian are in Rio for an exhibition match. A couple of kids end up snatching David’s camera in a typical tourist setup. Camera on the table, one kid comes and tries to sell you something, makes a scene by knocking something over. While you’re distracted, another kid swoops in and steals the camera and is long gone before you can react. Unless you’re David Sloane. Then you chase the kid down through Rio’s favelas, beat up two adult thugs, get your camera back, feed the kids and befriend them.
It’s refreshing that the locals aren’t the bad-guys in this film. In the previous two films it’s been very tilted towards the Thai people being untrustworthy and dangerous. In this one, the “bad guy” is an American who traffics young women, thinking he’s saving them from street life.
David and Xian even manage to befriend a cop in the process.
Tong Po is only mentioned very briefly and is not part of the plot at all, which is also refreshing.
There is still a fight, but the main theme of the movie is to take down the bad guy.
I would have liked more Rio scenery to have been included. There was a must-have helicopter shot of Christ the Redeemer, which I assume they purchased from Rio’s tourism authority because it has a distinctly different image quality.
Don’t miss the gratuitous waterfall shower scene.
2.75 stars.
