Kickboxer: Vengeance

MOVIE TITLE: Kickboxer: Vengeance

DIRECTOR: John Stockwell

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Martial Arts

RATING: R for bloody violence, mild swearing, and nudity

GRADE: Mixed

Martial arts prospect Kurt Sloane travels to Thailand to exact revenge for his brother Eric after undefeated Muay Thai champion Tong Po kills Eric in an underground fight. Kurt attempts to murder Po in his sleep with a pistol, but gets taken away by the police instead. Kurt’s only chance at avenging his brother is to train with the legendary Master Durand, who initially prepared Eric for his own fight with Tong Po. While all of this is going on, the Thai police are building a case against a fight promoter with corrupt connections to the law. Between Tong Po and Marcia (the crooked promoter), Kurt Sloane has an uphill battle that will see him spill more blood on the canvas than even his own dead brother.

Because this is a marital arts movie with various UFC fighters and former WWE Champion Dave Bautista in starring roles, the obvious positive point of this movie was the high octane violence. Kurt Sloane is a badass warrior, but even he has to succumb to much more powerful fighters in the early going of the movie. The training under Master Durand is no joke: cracking coconuts, bicycling under water, vertical pushups, and of course, getting the crap kicked out of him from time to time by his own teacher. No battle in this movie is gorier than Kurt’s eventual championship fight with Tong Po (it’s not much of a spoiler since even the dumbest viewer can see it from miles away). In that fight, blood splatters the arena like a modern art masterpiece as they get to use glass-covered gloves and katanas. All in all, this is a well-choreographed movie. Every beating Kurt takes both in training and in real fights will shape him to become the ultimate Muay Thai warrior (or he can die trying, one of the two).

And then we have the low points of the movie, most of which include clichés, bad acting from UFC fighters, cheesy dialogue, and characters I couldn’t give a damn about either way. As far as clichés go, there are so many of them peppered throughout the movie: classic revenge tale, training a nobody to become a champion in a short time span, instant relationships, vanilla sex, and lax authority just to name a few. The characters were so badly acted that I couldn’t get emotionally invested in them. I didn’t shed one tear when Eric was murdered by Tong Po. It felt like Eric and all the other characters were just there for the sake of being there. The only performance I could really praise was Dave Bautista as he took the role of the villainous Tong Po. He had the look, the athleticism, and the menacing aura of a warrior, all of which he probably picked up while working with the WWE. Other than that, there’s really nobody to cheer for in this movie.

I’m probably being a little too generous when I give this movie a mixed grade (three stars out of five), but I’m a huge fan of martial arts ultra violence, so that’s pretty much the only thing that saved the movie from being a train wreck. It would be hypocritical of me to disrespect the violence in this movie considering I watch pro-wrestling and mixed-martial arts on a regular basis. The storylines, dialogue, and acting in WWE isn’t always Oscar-worthy, but at least it keeps bringing me back to my TV every Monday and Tuesday. Maybe a mixed grade is appropriate after all.