Kickboxer (1989) – David Worth (Friday’s Finest)

The above movie poster adorned my room when I was 15 years old. Nothing has changed because my 14 year boy recently came back from a school excursion to a book and movie fair and presented me a Rocky IV poster which I recently put up on my living room wall. He’s crafty my son; since he didn’t want to lug it around all day so he paid a girl from his class (as you do) $5.000 pesos to do the carrying for him. I didn’t know if I should praise or rebuke him upon learning that, instead I did neither.

I went and saw Kickboxer with my school friends at the cinema. It had everything I wanted to see in a martial arts film: great action, (although more focused on training here than fighting matches, which was refreshing), likeable characters and the end fight scene was the most bad arse I could recall up to that point. They encased their hands with shattered glass in the lead up and fought in a traditional Muay Thai fighter pit. It also included the most formidable and chilling opponent in Tong Po (see above). A lot of people don’t know that Van Damme and Michel Qissi (Tong Po) were actually best friends growing up in Belgium. As kids they dreamed about moving to America and being movie stars, once they arrived in America they had so many set backs, but they persevered for 6 years and never gave up.

IMDB Storyline:
Kurt Sloan is the corner-man for his brother, U.S. kickboxing champion Eric Sloan. When Kurt witnesses his brother become maliciously paralyzed in the ring by Thailand champion Tong Po, Kurt vows revenge. With the help of Xian, a kickboxing trainer who lives in a remote area of Thailand, Kurt trains for the fight of his life.

This was one of Jean-Claude’s break out films and it spawned several sequels, which didn’t better the original. The more they made the least interesting they became until the final results were unwatchable. As always with these films the first film is usually the best of the bunch so here we are today. I always considered Kickboxer the mightiest and no-nonsense martial arts film out there, although I admit to hardly being a connoisseur of the genre. It was a huge box-office success as well, grossing $50 million on a budget of $2.7 million.
The movie was roasted by the critics at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic receiving just 36% and 33% respectively. Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times called the film “egregiously dull” and a contender for one of “the dumbest action pictures of the year“, citing its “jarring shifts in tone, insurmountable plot implausibilities, rampant racial stereotyping, superfluous nudity and inhuman amounts of comically exaggerated violence“. Funny, I came away from it thinking – ‘what’s not to like‘? Kickboxer remains a ‘classic’ to me. Everything about it should make it bad – And yet, after watching it, I really don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time and even enjoyed it on repeated viewings.

Kurt Sloane played by Jean – Claude decides to go to the home of Muay Thai kick boxing, Thailand. There he realizes that he doesn’t know squat about the true art of kick boxing and learns one painful lesson after the other. He’s physically impressive so it’s kind of hard to swallow his naivete about fighting and what not. Oh well; fun for all.
Kickboxer was another in a long line of star vehicles for the “Muscles from Brussels“, but it’s the only one I took a real liking to. When it comes to those musclebound heroes who were so popular in the eighties/early nineties, you kind of remember their breakthrough roles. It was fair to say that Jean Claude Van Damme hadn’t done much before he starred as the lead in Kickboxer. 

IMDB Trivia

• Dennis Alexio, who plays Eric Sloane, was a World Light Heavyweight and World Cruiserweight kick boxing champion in real life.
• The scene in which Kurt has meat tied to his leg and is chased by Xian Chow’s dog was inspired by a real-life event in which a young Jean-Claude Van Damme was ordered by his karate teacher to wear a protective suit and withstand the attempts of a trained dog to pull him to the ground.
• Michel Qissi was a technical advisor/choreographer when he overheard the production crew say they were looking for a tall oriental-looking guy with a background in Muay Thai. He volunteered, and got the part of Tong Po. Because he is originally from Morocco, make-up was used to make him look more Asian.
• Chuck Norris was originally supposed to star as Kurt Sloane.

References:
1. Kickboxer (1989 film) – Wikipedia
2. Kickboxer (1989) – IMDB

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“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand