Fairly standard revenge film with a very much 'seen it all before' plot line

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2015)

Eric Sloane (Dennis Alexio) is a champion kickboxer who is invincible and seemingly untouchable in his home country. Having beaten everyone that he can in America, he's talked into travelling to the home of kickboxing in Thailand to see if he can take on the best that they have to offer. However, Eric ends up paralysed after a fight with Thailand's best Tong Po (Michel Qissi). Eric's brother Kurt (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is determined to avenge Po for what he did to his brother and sets about training and preparing for the fight of his life with the assistance of Xian Chow (Dennis Chan).
Kickboxer seems to be remembered as one of the defining films for Van Damme and watching it again today I can't help but be reminded at how lazy and unimaginative that this film feels as a whole. Let's look at some examples....
We have a Rocky 4 scenario at the start where we have a cocky champion that underestimates his opponent and ends up paying the price for this (albeit the champion's fate was much worse in Rocky 4, but the general consensus is the same).
Kickboxer then switches tone and becomes a karate kid style film whereby an unassuming martial arts genius takes a pupil under his wing and provides him with the necessary training to defeat his opponent.
This all sounds OK in writing, but somehow these elements don't translate quite as well on screen; for one thing this film lacks the entertainment value that Rocky 4 offered; sure Rocky 4 was agenda heavy, but it was entertaining. The other problem with this film is that The Karate Kid element is weak compared to Karate Kid; the training montages were dull and unimaginative for the most part (although some elements did make me laugh so this aspect of the narrative wasn't a complete failure). If we continue to draw comparisons then it's almost impossible to overlook the fact that Van Damme lacks the vulnerability of Macchio who looked like a 5 stone weakling in the Karate Kid. Van Damme is the 'Muscles from Brussels' so to see him training as a rookie in martial arts was a tough sell to say the least.
Kickboxer is a predictable film which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the clichéd turn of events at the end was almost too much to bear (Kurt is getting his ass kicked, but then when Po announces that he raped his woman Kurt seems to whirr into action). It's an obvious plot device and to be honest it would have been better if we'd have just seen Kurt kicking Po's ass because of all the training that he'd had).
I noted at the start of the film that Van Damme was responsible for the fight choreography and for that he does deserve some credit. A lot of the fight scenes were intense and quite well-staged.
There are other problems with this film such as cheesy dialogue, wooden acting and awful dubbing, but given the fact that this is a JCVD film these are forgivable flaws. However, the lazy and overly familiar plot line that plagues Kickboxer only helps to remind us of the better films that it tries and fails to emulate.