Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
The Internet Movie Database is a powerful engine that can be used for both good and evil, and those of us who have ceded a portion of our lives to its control can find ourselves victims of some capricious whims indeed. In the early days of the Unwatchable project, long before I’d been beaten down by the likes of It’s Pat and Anus Magillicutty, I first encountered the Kickboxer series in the form of episode four, The Aggressor. Now, more than two months later, I find myself face-to-face with Kickboxer 3: The Art of War.
Some confusion results. Kickboxer 4 opened with a lengthy montage, presumably made up of clips from the previous installments, designed to bring us up to speed on the story. So I assumed I had already seen a miniaturized version of Kickboxer 3…but now that I’ve actually seen the movie, I can’t see how it connects to its follow-up. It seems to take place outside the carefully established continuity of the Kickboxer series; the villainous Tong Po goes unseen and unmentioned, and our hero David Sloane (Sasha Mitchell) has a Miyagi-esque mentor who appears in none of the other films. I notice that both Kickboxer 2 and 4 are directed by chronic offender Albert Pyun, whereas Kickboxer 3 is directed by Rick King (Prayer of the Rollerboys). I can only assume that King’s work did not fit into Pyun’s vision for the series, and he chose to ignore it entirely. I’d research this matter further if I thought anyone gave a crap.
Anywhat, The Art of War finds Sloane and his wise old Asian mentor Xian (Dennis Chan) traveling to Rio for a big match. Shortly after they arrive, street urchin Marcos steals their camera and Sloane is forced to chase and put the beat-down on the lad. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and Sloane takes both Marcos and his jailbait sister Isabella under his wing. Lane (Richard Comar), the slimy manager of Sloane’s slated kickboxing opponent, is a slave-pimp in his off-hours, and he kidnaps Isabella with plans to sell her off to the highest bidder. Lane has his fortune riding on his own fighter, so it’s imperative that Sloane lose the upcoming match. To that end, he makes Sloane a deal: he will let Isabella go if Sloane complies with a special training regimen he’s cooked up. (He’s already asked Sloane to throw the fight and been turned down, but that was before Isabella was kidnapped. Presumably Sloane would be more willing to go along with the plan now that a child’s life is at stake, but then we wouldn’t get to enjoy the scenes of Sloane running up a hill with a backpack full of rocks and getting dragged behind a boat.)
The high point of Kickboxer 3 arrives with a montage of wise Xian’s efforts to heal Sloane in time for the fight. He collects various roots and mouse tails and the venom from a snake to prepare a healing elixir, then smears Sloane’s body with some sort of fungal poultice. Hey, it works! Sloane kicks ass and takes names and everyone lives happily ever after until Kickboxer 4. The question I’m left to wrestle with is whether or not Kickboxer 3 is really 22 bad movies worse than Kickboxer 4. On this score, I suppose it is: Kickboxer 4 features a lot more people getting kicked in the face.
Previously on Unwatchable:
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance
78. The Quick and the Undead
79. Anus Magillicutty
80. The Smokers
81. Soccer Dog: The Movie
