Kickboxer: Vengeance TKO’d by 1989’s original version

Those of us who grew up on Jean-Claude Van Damme’s action films know that they had a certain formula. The acting wouldn’t be great, the budget would be low, and the plot would be a little convoluted. (This last part often involved explaining away Van Damme’s accent. Ten points if you can tell me the explanation given for his accent in Bloodsport.) But we also knew that we’d get some awesome fight choreography, some painful-looking splits, and Van Damme’s earnest overacting, which was charming.

So I was expecting more of the same once I heard that Kickboxer: Vengeance, a reboot of Van Damme’s 1989 film Kickboxer, was in the works. Unfortunately, Vengeance inherited all the bad traits from Van Damme’s previous movies, and almost none of the good.

Vengeance’s story differs only slightly from the original. In the current edition, American kickboxer Kurt Sloane (played by stuntman/fight choreographer Alain Moussi, taking over the role Van Damme played in the 1989 version) is seeking—wait for it—vengeance for his brother’s death at the hands of Thai fighter Tong Po (former WWE wrestler Dave Bautista), as opposed to seeking vengeance for his brother’s paralysis at the elbow of Tong Po. (Feel free to offer up this synopsis up to anyone who tells you that Hollywood has run out of ideas.)

Sloane tries to gain his revenge by infiltrating Tong Po’s training fortress and unsuccessfully attempting to assassinate the monstrous fighter. Why Tong Po—a man who claims to have killed dozens of other fighters for the mere sport of it—chooses to have the police remove Sloane from the premises as opposed to straight-up murdering him is never fully explained. Sloane then decides to seek out the services of kickboxing master Durand (Van Damme, still in phenomenal shape) in order to learn the skills he needs to defeat Tong Po.

The movie overall, however, differs greatly from the original in a number of ways that severely hamper it.

For example, it’s apparent right away that Moussi lacks Van Damme’s magnetic on-screen presence. For all of Van Damme’s shortcomings as an actor, he still has a ton of charisma, and Van Damme’s wattage outshines Moussi’s so thoroughly that Moussi seems like an afterthought any time the two appear together on the screen. And while Van Damme won’t be taking home an Oscar any time soon for his performances, his acting skills have improved over the past few years, and he’s easily the best actor in this film.

This may almost be the very definition of damning someone with faint praise, considering the rest of the Vengeance’s cast. Bautista is suitably threatening as Tong Po, but he stretches credulity in the role of a Muay Thai master–he’s simply too big and too muscular to make audiences believe that he is an agile fighter, despite some valiant camera work aimed at adding some speed to Tong Po’s movements.

Compare Bautista to Michel Qissi, the actor who played Tong Po in the original. Qissi looked and moved like a legitimate kickboxing champion, whereas Bautista is too physically stiff for us to ever really buy into the idea that he is a lightning-quick martial-arts master. (Guy still looks like a beast, though. Pretty impressive when you consider that he’s almost 50 years old.)

The incredibly beautiful Gina Carano, on screen briefly as the fight promoter who lures Kurt’s brother to that death match against Tong Po, has gotten better as an actress, too, but she still has a ways to go as a thespian before audiences are confusing her with Meryl Streep. At least, I think she does; it’s hard to tell whether she is giving an average performance or if the lines, direction, and editing are so bad as to make her role (and most of the others) unsalvageable. Only Van Damme is able to rise above these external limitations, but just barely.

The fun-but-unintentional campiness of the original is also missing here. Whereas 1989’s Kickboxer had a number of amusing lines, a couple of entertaining performances, and some great fight choreography filmed in captivating ways, the same can’t be said for Vengeance aside from an unintentionally hilarious brawl that takes place atop a pair of prosthetic elephants. That a movie centered on fighting would lack any memorable combat scenes is bad enough, but it becomes especially egregious in light of the fact that the film’s dialogue and direction don’t even begin to make up for that absence.

It may be unfair to compare Kickboxer: Vengeance to the original, but a love for the 1989 version is probably the only reason anyone (myself included) is watching this movie in the first place. The original is a fun way to pass 90 minutes of your day, but Vengeance just seems joyless. I could watch 90 minutes of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Gina Carano any day of the week, however, and there are probably lots of people who feel the same way about the often-shirtless Alain Moussi.

It just would have been nice if the writers and director would have thrown in some decent fight scenes or lines—hell, some decent anything, other than our boy Van Damme—to go along with the eye candy.