Kickboxer (1989)

(On Cable TV, April 2020) I’m not a good audience for Jean-Claude Van Damme films, and it’s not Kickboxer that will make me change my mind. Sporting the thinnest possible excuse to chain together a bunch of repetitive martial arts sequences, the film heads over to Thailand for Van Damme to be part of a tournament and avenge his paralyzed brother. The rest is just one fight after another, and while the film boasts of being the first international production to feature the Muay Thai martial art to worldwide audiences, it’s not as if I can make much of a difference between this and other forms of combat. Look: I probably would have liked Kickboxer more if I had any interest in sweaty bash’em up bouts, but I don’t so—meh. This being said, even I can recognize that Van Damme is physically very good on a pure physical level. Alas, the story is basic stuff, and the execution is more grimy than exciting. Fans, you already know if you’re going to like this—but Kickboxer does not escape its own sub-genre.