This 5th Kickboxer film feels like it throws all lore out of the window. I can’t remember if it even mentions the Sloane brothers at all. They’ve also selected a new bad-guy country: South Africa. The story-line is much the same as the previous four, but they’ve left out damsel-in-distress trope, which is refreshing.
Here’s a brief rundown of the plot:
The new lead character, Matt Reeves, is a do-good kickboxing champ who runs a dojo for kids in LA. Look at this dreamboat.
He finds out that a psychopath (Mr. Negaal) wants to create a new kickboxing league, and if fighters don’t sign up to the new league, their championship victories and titles are null and void. The chances of you being murdered by the psychopath’s henchmen are pretty high too, which happens to Matt’s friend Johnny.
To avenge Johnny’s death, Matt teams up with a former henchman to take down Mr Negaal.
The best bit of the film is definitely the fight scenes that take place inside the luggage handling area of an airport. It’s particularly entertaining in a post-2001 security theatre world.
No steamy/smoky sex scenes. No damsel in distress. No sexual-violence-towards-women-as-a-plot-device. It’s, by 1990s standards nearly feminist.
Some attempts were made to showcase South Africa’s scenery.
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.
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.
I didn’t think I’d be back so soon, but plan changes this afternoon gave me some free time to squander. And what better way than by watching a film.
I should have picked a better film. But plans are plans and Kickboxer 2: The Road Back was next in line after Kickboxer.
It’s hard to imagine a more one dimensional film than the first Kickboxer, but it had a couple of things going for it that this sequel absolutely does not.
The original Kickboxer had JCVD. I thought he was in this second one too, but this one only features the original Sloan brothers as brief newspaper clippings at the beginning of the film, and they earn a couple of brief mentions throughout the film. The main character in Kickboxer 2 is the hitherto secret third Sloan brother, and his douchebag sparring partner and friend.
The original Kickboxer also had some footage in Thaliand with some nice wats. This one is set in bleak LA, with most of the footage being inside a gym or fighting arena.
The final fight scene isn’t set anywhere impressive like the original fight between Kurt and Tong Po. It’s in an empty arena, being filmed, if I’ve understood it correctly, to broadcast for the underground fight scene in Thailand where Tong Po is going to kill the final Sloan brother. (Spoiler: he doesn’t).
The decision to show nearly all of the final fight scene in slow motion sucks. The lighting sucks. The film stock sucks. The audio sucks. The story sucks.
The only good bit about this movie, really, is Brian Austin Green who is in it for about a minute at the beginning of the film as the kid who doubts David Sloane’s abilities.
I have distinct memories of going to the video rental place in Höganäs as a kid. The pinball machines that I adored were there, and I got to play a few rounds with dad. But there was also this promo for Kickboxer as a larger-than-life-size cutout. I thought it was the coolest looking thing ever. I was 9.
A few years later, we’d moved to Australia. Sitting with older friends on the couch in their livingroom they suggested we watch Kickboxer. I think I would have been 12 or 13 maybe. I don’t remember much of the movie itself from that time, other than that I definitely thought I wasn’t old enough to watch it and was surprised no adults intervened.
Many many years later (33?) this poster popped into my mind again and I decided to pull down a copy to watch. And then I checked if there are any sequels. There are 6 of them!
Kickboxer (1989) Kickboxer 2: The Boxening Road Back (1991) Kickboxer 3: The Art of War (1992) Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994) The Redemption: Kickboxer 5 (1995)
Then a significant gap. Maybe enough for it to be a reboot, I’m not sure, but I’m looking forward to finding out! I’m not hitting up IMDB for details. I’m just going to go in blind. The last two are:
Kickboxer doesn’t pass any of the tests. It doesn’t get close to passing the Bechdel. It uses sexual violence as a plot device. Americans come in blasing guns and firing grenades. Thai people are portrayed either as untrustworthy and ruthless, or as mystical and spiritual.
So, in short, the film is shit. The fight scenes are dreadfully choreographed. The combination punches are worthy of an Austin Powers or Naked Gun movie. The characters are shallow and one dimensional (except JCVD’s muscles – they are definitely not one dimensional).
It definitely feels like the fight-choreography was done to maximise JCVD’s bodybuilding poses. These aren’t the best examples of this, but it was the best I could with image search.
There are a couple of good things about the film.
The film grain is delicious in the dim lighting. It was shot on 35mm and it shows. The lighting in the final fight sequence is also really good.
Oddly, it’s better than I thought it would be. There were a lot of things that I didn’t get as a 12 year old.
