Kickboxer (1989)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1989
	Director: Mark DiSalle, David Worth
	Actors: Jean-Claude Van Damme (Welcome to the Jungle, JCVD), Dennis Alexio, Dennis Chan
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 16.10.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Eric Sloane (Alexio) flies to Thailand with his brother Kurt (Van Damme) to defend his Kickboxing World Champion title. He will loose badly to Tong Po and Kurt will endeavor to avenge him.
Review: Now that is a good classic shameless Action movie of the 80's. I loved it as a teenager, like I did most of this kind of movies. For sure the story is not very sophisticated, but this simplicity is exactly what one wants to see in such movie: good guy seeks revenge, trains and wins. The setting in Thailand is quite original as at that time Action movies were mostly taking place in the USA, so this offers some nice view of that country, in particular the temple in which Kurt trains. And the fight scenes are well choreographed, by JCVD himself I learned, except for the final one that I found to be not so well balanced (the bad guy looses too easily) and strangely cut, so that I even though it was censored but a specialized website (link here) states that the edition I bought is not censored... I still have my doubts. The video quality was surprisingly good for a Blu-ray I bought new for 6 euros! One bad element in this movie (apart from the sometimes cheesy dialogs) is the 80's soundtrack, typical illustration that one should not use the trendy music at the time to score a movie because it ages so quickly. On the contrary the accelerating Thai music used during the combats (reminding me of the one in the video game Street Fighter) fits very well.
Rating: 7 /10