Product: Bloodsport [VHS] (1988)
Rating: 3.0
"What the hell is a Dim Mack?"
It's kind of difficult to write a review for "Bloodsport" if you're neither a hardcore fan nor a devoted detractor of the movie. For certain it has its place in history, and for certain a lot of its aspects hold up favorably to some of the cut & paste work Jean-Claude Van Damme phoned in during the later years of his career, but personally, I regard the movie as I would a Sherman tank: a physical powerhouse of its time worthy of commendation but no longer a winner of conflicts. Far be it for me to not have this classic in my personal collection, but I can think of a number of movies that have since done better at just about everything that this one had going for it.The plot: supposedly based on a true story, martial artist Frank Dux (Van Damme,Timecop) deserts his military duty to answer his deceased master's call to the Kumite - a fabled underground tournament bringing together the world's top fighters to determine who the best of the best is.It's noteworthy that this film was Van Damme's stepping stone into Hollywood, considering that all of its campy faults could've just as easily done it in and stopped his career before it started. Parts of this movie are so poorly staged and so poorly acted that it's almost enough to make you turn it off. Different from the misguided enthusiasm of Van Damme's previous cult classic,No Retreat, No Surrender, this one has a couple scenes (most notably the flashbacks) in which the actors are giving such a slack-armed, poor-posture performance that you wonder whether they even want to be there. Of course, the alternative is a decent bit of overacting, which I prefer since it's fun to watch these big, tough guys let it all hang out because they don't know how to do it any better. It's especially entertaining to watch the movie in retrospect, knowing that it'd be a round two decades before Van Damme realize his dream of becoming a"real actor."Of course, his thematic ambitions seem unnecessary when considering the abundance of the film's selling point: tons and tons and tons of fights. Seriously, there's a lot. I've forgotten the exact number of brawls, but it's definitely one of the few I know of to exceed twenty hand-to-hand matches. And the variety of fighters and fighting styles-! Not since the heyday of Bruce Lee had there been such a cattle call for varied martial arts practitioners, representing disciplines from karate to muay thai, straight pit-fighting, monkey kung fu, and more. Never before in western cinema had there been such a flat out give-'em-what-they-want splash of nonstop martial arts action, one fight after another...although the quality of these fights fluctuates. No, I can't even say that: while half of the matches are split between so-so and very-good quality, the other half are only shown in segments or are over with too fast. This allows for several montage scenes wherein the action flows smoothly from one bout to the next, but it doesn't let you reminisce about quite as many separate thrills when you're thinking about the fights later.The casting is solid. I really liked the inclusion Bolo Yeung (Enter the Dragon), who - through an almost purely physical performance - cemented himself as one of the few memorable villains in martial arts film history. Of course, why Forrest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) and his cohort are in this movie, conducting their own little subplot, still eludes me. As far as production values go, the movie is a model of efficiency, accomplishing more on a $1 million budget than a modern theatrical production could hope for (how the heck did they manage to pay all the fighters?). For accomplishments like this alone, "Bloodsport" deserves recognition, but it doesn't quite earn my love. Van Damme would outdo himself in the action department in later years, and as far as the tournament setup goes, theunderappreciated sequelmatched and improved on it. No karate buff ought to go without watching this film at least once - lord knows, many future features would have benefited if their directors had seen this one and built off of its standard - but it can only endear itself to me so much thanks to its limited but significant faults.