Kickboxer: Vengeance

Absolute garbage. This shoddily crafted remake of the 1989 martial arts classic stars Alain Moussi as Kurt Sloane, Dave Bautista as the infamous Tong Po, and Jean-Claude Van Damme as the trainer, Durand. Gina Carano also has a pointless role. All are terrible. Alain Moussi pulls the funniest faces, and is hilariously incompetent as an actor. Van Damme has his usual careless swagger, and I'm pretty sure his voice is dubbed for most of it. The film is so bad, and it does not even have the excuse of being fan-made. But I guess it is no surprise as it was made by John Stockwell, the director of that Gina Carano debacle, In The Blood. It follows the exact same pattern as the first Kickboxer; Eric dies, Kurt avenges him by training in Muay Thai, which consists of strength training, hitting coconuts, running, cycling underwater, kicking trees/baseball bats, and sword fighting with a young girl. So, no actual Muay Thai technique whatsoever! I'm no expert of Muay Thai, but I am fairly certain that as a newbie, just fighting people day after day, with no guidance or input, does not turn you into a Muay Thai champion. But then you know a film is bad when it cannot even make a decent training montage. There are two attempts, and both fall flat on their ass. The film tries something new with the final fight; right after they've covered their knuckles with glass (which looks gummy bears) in round two, it then introduces a round with swords. It is so badly choreographed, as is every fight in the film (the worst being a street fight in and around a few elephants). Literally, bad guys are just waiting to be hit because Moussi is too slow with his moves. Everything in this film is shit.

F

Well, not everything is shit. There is one good thing; Sara Malakul Lane. She's not a good actress and her character is not needed in the slightest, but damn she is beautiful. And she gets her tits out in the film's only sex scene.

How's Bautista?

Wooden.

They'd probably get a better performance out of a an actual piece of wood. I'm thinking Cedar.

This and Skiptrace are easily some of the worst films I have seen this year and it's sad that both just so happen to have two of my favorite action movie icons I grew up with. I honestly wouldn't know where to start, but no matter how many fight scenes they threw at you the movie the movie was always boring. I didn't give a shit about anybody and while I've liked Bautista in certain films in the past it's obvious that he has a limited range of acting skills and they use him in the worst ways possible.

Jean-Claude Van Damme pretty much showed up to get one of the easiest paychecks ever and so did Carano who doesn't even have a fight scene in this movie. I guess the best thing about it was seeing the Thai chicks tits, but I sware she looks so much hotter in that pic Algren posted.

LOL. Coconut.

F

Truth and truth.

Disappointed at the lack of a review. But the grade is perfect.

Yeah. There's just little worth writing about. It's just bad and you nailed several of the notable facets in your review already. I guess I can say the film is sometimes funny because it's so bad, especially Moussi, everything he does looks so inept he's the joke of the film. Also this guy Georges St-Pierre, so bad and as you mentioned any type of fighting, what the whole film is basically about, is just the worst.

It is strange. They could have picked literally any fighter-type actor, and they choose Moussi!! I mean, even Scott Adkins would have been better. Every fighter-type actor must have been hoping they were chosen to play the lead in the Kickboxer remake.

What did you think of Gina Carano? I know you have a soft spot for her...

I generally like her indeed, but she was, well especially looked awful in this, no idea what happened to her face and actually everything about her role was terrible. Perhaps her worst role by far. I thought she was very good in Haywire and has a good role in Fast 6 too. And yeah she's In the Blood too, which is a bad film, but not as bad as this (Kickboxer: Vengeance).

And oh, what I also wanted to mention here because it annoyed me, the "Thai airport" where Moussi is dropped off, it's Hong Kong airport...I mean sure maybe most people won't know, but I just find that stupid.