Entertaining enough

Rating: Null/10 (9 May 2013)

So now I've finally seen all of the first three movies. I had "Kickboxer" in my TiVo but chose to watch the sequel first. You can see why if you go to my review of that movie. And I saw the second sequel before this one as well.
Did it help to see the second one first? Certain details were less of a shock. However, the brother in the other movies in the series did not exist or was unknown to the brothers in this movie. And something else was inconsistent between this movie and the sequel. But I can't say what that was because it would be a major spoiler. Let's just say I was dreading the ending of this movie but it was much more satisfying than I had thought it would be. A term used on the CW Smallville message boards was "Offscreenville". Perhaps something happened offscreen between the two movies.
You watch Jean Claude Van Damme movies to see him fight. You do not watch them to see him act. He did smile a lot in some scenes with his brother. He almost never smiles. So here, he seems to have a more pleasant personality, at least in a few scenes, than what I am used to.
Van Damme is shown as the director of fight scenes. I don't know precisely how you direct yourself, but Van Damme knows what he is doing. And all the fighting is really good.
As was the case in the sequels, Dennis Chan does a very good job as trainer Xian. And there is a lot of comedy, though not nearly as much as in the third movie. The training here reminded me a lot of the training in the sequel: very tough, sometimes funny. Xian would not let Kurt give up.
Haskell Anderson is quite good as the man who gives Kurt and Eric so much help.
I'm not sure why Michel Qissi was shown in the credits as Tong Po, but whatever his real name is he is quite fierce without saying a word, and terrifying when he does speak the one time.
Rochelle Asana is simply adorable as Xian's niece who ran the village store.
I am curious about how Xian knew Kurt was American. Kurt's accent, of course, is explained when he says his parents divorced and he was raised by his mother in Belgium and his father stayed with Eric in the U.S. Eric has an "ethnic" look, though, which is never explained.
Is this a good movie? Maybe. It's no "Rocky", that's for sure. But it's not bad.