Kick action

Rating: 5/10 (5 June 2014)

Kickboxer is a bigger budget action vehicle for JCVD which features location shooting in Thailand with popular tourist sites of Bangkok visible.
The tale is a mixture of Rocky and The Karate Kid. Van Damme plays Belgian born Kurt Sloane whose US raised brother Eric gets brutally beaten and crippled after fighting the undefeated Thai kick-boxing champion Tong Po.
Kurt Sloane wants revenge and fight Po and is introduced to Xian who agrees to train Kurt so that he can be good enough to fight Po. Over time his tough training regimes leads to improvements but Po's backers are not going to take things lying down.
The better budget is there on screen, there is a lot of sly humour in the training scenes which reflect a lot of The Karate Kid movies and as the film progresses the Muscles from Brussels shows his trademark moves.
The film takes time to get going after the initial kick-boxing fight, there is an obligatory love plot and although not as thrilling as some of Van Damme's films of the early part of the 1990's this is a good showcase of his talents.