Kickboxer - review

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2011)

Without going into too much detail, "Kickboxer" follows the same formula as Rocky IV and, to a lesser extent, the other Rocky pictures and the Karate Kid films. Yet I found this film to be a lot of fun despite its predictability. Jean Claude Van Damme (playing the hero Kurt Sloan) is not a great actor, but his youthful exuberance, cheerful demeanour, and dashing appearance make him a very likable hero nonetheless. In addition, Van Damme is also not held back as much as in his later films when he goes through the indignity of saying fewer lines than the supporting cast. For me, the decision not to hold Van Damme back is a good one, because a hero can never hold our interest unless he has a well defined character to go along with his martial arts moves. Yet the best character in Kickboxer has to be Xian Chow (Dennis Chan) who trains Van Damme for his big fight with Tong Po (Michel Qissi). Xian Chow was obviously modelled after Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid movies, but his character has a few fresh elements. To begin with, Dennis Chan projects a dry sense of humour, like when he explains to Kurt Sloan why it is unwise to train a stranger in the art of Muay Thai. This movie was sold on its martial arts sequences, but the truth of the matter is that Dennis Chan steals the show whenever he performs on screen.
The rest of Kickboxer consists of Van Damme's Kurt Sloan going through intensive training against a gorgeous backdrop of Thai architecture and great 1980s music, which is just as well since training sequences in an exotic martial arts form and amidst Ancient Thai architecture are reliably entertaining. This film, especially its training sequences, also has a subtle statement to make on life which was very much in keeping with the spirit of the 1980s. This statement, simply expressed, is that the route to success and lasting happiness is to suppress troubling emotions, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and work incredibly hard to overcome adversity. Those people who fail to overcome adversity in this way only have themselves to blame.