The 80s were a big time for a certain breed of action star. They may or may not have spoken English as their first language, but they were cast less on their ability to convincingly play believable characters as they were for basically being large men who looked like they could hit very hard with a fist, kick, or a weapon of some kind. Their movies were known more by their stars than anything else. Some of these action stars are still getting regular work today in one form or another. One of those actors was Jean-Claude Van Damme, and he got his big break on Bloodsport, a movie that is for some reason on my Fill-In Filmography.
It’s supposedly based on the life of the film’s fight choreographer Frank Dux, but let’s just say some really casual research tells me that Dux may not have been completely honest in his version of his own life story. But I won’t say more about that as I would prefer to judge the movie on its own merits, and I had done so long before I read up on the real Dux.
Frank Dux (Van Damme) is a US Army Captain who decides to go compete in an underground martial arts tournament in Hong Kong, the Kumite. He does so, in part, to honor his dying master (Roy Chiao), a man who trained young Frank since childhood as an adopted member of the Tanaka clan, especially after the master’s own son died young. Frank doesn’t have permission to go to Hong Kong to compete, so that means two government agents (Norman Burton and mildly surprisingly a young Forest Whitaker) follow him to Hong Kong in an attempt to bring him back for…reasons. There’s also a reporter (Leah Ayres) trying to sneak into the tournament to report on it to the outside world, but all that says to me is that for a secret, underground fight tournament, an awful lot of people know about it.
However, as Frank advances through the ranks, much of the movie is about different matches, all seen briefly, as fighters with different styles do what is necessary to move on to the next round. That is particularly true for a blatantly evil returning champion Chong Li (Bolo Yeung). Frank needs to dodge the agents, keep the reporter happy, and do well in the ring while hanging out with his buddies, fellow competitor Jackson (Donald Gibb) and guide Victor Lin (Ken Sui). Can he win the tournament? And why should anyone care?
That last question is an important one to me. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for Frank and the others to want to compete in this thing so badly. Winning seems to be more of a matter of bragging rights over anything else. He’s not avenging anyone, and this isn’t Enter the Dragon where the tournament is really a cover for some sort of diabolical plot. I didn’t get the impression his master wanted him to go all that much. And he has no special reason to hate (or be hated by) Li until well into the tournament despite the movie’s posturing of Li as the villain. When asked by reporter Janice, Frank just says it’s about being the best, but surely there are other ways to do that? Why an underground fight tournament that many people both do and don’t know about?
It might have helped if the rest of the movie was well-done. Most of it was rather cliched, right down to a cheesy 80s power ballad. The draw is probably the fight choreography, and while there are some, let’s say, interesting stances and martial arts styles on display, it sure did look like a lot of the hits weren’t even landing from where I was sitting. Factor in as well that, despite the title of the movie, most of the competitors were mostly just a little roughed up and little more than that, and this is a movie with only so-so fight scenes and not much in the way of stakes. The Karate Kid might have actually done it better in certain respects. So, yeah, this was a whole lot of not much.
Grade: D
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