Kickboxer: Retaliation

Kickboxer: Retaliation the follow up to 2016’s Kickboxer: Vengeance. The movie begins with Kurt Sloane (played by Alain Moussi) sitting in a train car staring intently at his wife Liu. After a few moments pass, we see the Sloane’s begin a sultry dance. While the Sloane’s are dancing the Lambada (I’m guessing…) an unknown assailant creeps into view. After he unsuccessfully tries to execute Kurt the two men exchange blows and Kurt’s wife vanishes from the train car. Two more men enter the scene with axes to try their hand at eliminating the target. Ironically, one of these men is actually the MMA fighter Wanderlei “the ax murderer” Silva. When I saw that, it gave me a nice chuckle. As the fight progresses, the final attacker enters the fray, and the fighters migrate to the roof of the train.

Kurt throws the original assassin off the train ending the fight, he quickly follows the assassin into the river. In the next scene, we learn that the fight on the train was actually a dream (nightmare?) that Kurt (now a professional MMA fighter) was having in the middle of an MMA bout. After Kurt comes back to the present, he ends the fight with a fancy transition into an arm-bar (he calls it a “hurricane arm-bar). Kurt is cleaning up post-fight, as he gets out of the shower, two men saying that they’re US Marshals are waiting for Kurt. The Marshals are investigating the murder of Tong Po. Kurt is then promptly tazed by the two Marshals.

Thomas Tang Moore played masterfully by Christopher Lambert is the villain of the movie. Moore organized the Underground Fighting Circuit where Kurt fought and killed Tong Po. We see Kurt Sloane lying naked on the floor, Moore reveals that Kurt left him in a pickle when he vacated his underground fighting title. As reparation, Moore would like Kurt to fight against the current champion Mongkut; played by Game of Thrones Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (the Mountain that Rides). Our intrepid hero refuses this offer landing him in a Thai prison.

Prison is where the story really began to pick up for me. Inmates almost immediately attack Kurt, in an attempt to convince him that fighting Mongkut is a far superior option to staying in jail. This leads to Kurt “cowboying up” for the first time this movie. Kurt battles his way through many nameless prisoners with ease. The guards take Kurt to be whipped for insubordination. This is the point in the movie where Tang Moore convinces Kurt to fight Mongkut. Through the simple act of kidnapping his wife.

One of the biggest surprises for me in the movie came at this point; Mike Tyson! Briggs is upset his meditation was interrupted by Kurt. Briggs and Kurt do battle on each other, with Briggs showing himself to be the dominant fighter. Kurt loses, and the two gents are taken to the whipping room for some bonding… I mean to be whipped some more.

Due to the beating Briggs gave Kurt, Kurt informs Briggs that he needs some training. Briggs decides to help Kurt by introducing him to Master Durand… again. Durand, imprisoned and quite Daredevil-like (he’s been blinded) was imprisoned to train fighters. Thus begins one of my favorite part of any JCVD movie: the training sequence. Aside from quips about the lack of skill Kurt possesses, the focus of the training is to hit harder and utilize his other senses. At this point, a fight I never knew I needed was teased; Briggs and Durand are discussing Kurt’s chances of defeating Mongkut. Durand believes Kurt doesn’t stand a chance, Briggs thinks Kurt has the heart to defeat him. A few strikes are exchanged before they agree to disagree.

Durand, very worried about Kurt’s chances to defeat Mongkut decides to do a little scouting. He goes to Moore to offer himself in place of Kurt: Because what could be a bigger draw than a 400lb behemoth vs a blind man? Moore strongly refuses this offer saying that it wouldn’t be a fair fight. It should be noted that the negotiations took place during a sword fight (because martial arts movie…) which Durand won by the way. He then gets to go take a “look” at Mongkut’s training, and he hears that he has a weak chin… I don’t get it either, and I tried to figure it out, I truly did. This adjusts Durand’s training methods a bit, and he works Kurt on ways to reach Mongkut’s 6′-10″ head.

As the training reaches its climax, Kurt decides that he needs a tune-up fight. This is also the moment when they formulate a plan to rescue Liu. They travel to the same fighting arena where Kurt got his butt kicked in Kickboxer Vengeance. Kurt heads out to fight the new champion of this ring, while Durand wanders off to steal a cell phone so that he can call a ride for them to escape. As Kurt defeats his opponent, they beat up the guard that Moore sent with them because he knows where Liu is being kept. At first, he leads them on a wild goose chase where Kurt gets to beat up a number of nameless peons again. Then after he is caught once again, he takes them to Thomas Tang Moore’s penthouse where Liu is actually being held.

Once in the penthouse, we’re treated to a gratuitous display of some female twins in thongs as they proceed to attack Kurt. The highlight of this fight isn’t the thongs, but that Moore has a hall of mirrors! Strictly for sweet battle scenes, I’d imagine… Kurt defeats the lingerie twins and recovers Liu, he also happens to run into Mongkut. Kurt throws a couple of kicks, they do nothing, in retaliation Mongkut goes to punch Kurt and Liu jumps in to prevent the punch from hitting her husband. This sends her into a coma, bringing the needed motivation for Kurt to beat Mongkut in the ring.

Liu recovers from her coma, and we move to an old temple for the climactic battle between Mongkut and Kurt. As the fighters wrap their wrists in rope and enter the ring, we see firsthand the size discrepancy between fighters. It is fair to say that the first round belongs to Mongkut, the second round as well, especially because the second round ends with Kurt being dead for a minute or so. Liu jumps in to save the day by grabbing some of Mongkut’s adrenaline cocktail. I’ll say it surprised me that no one thought to stop her from doing that.

Which brings us to round three! this is a more evenly matched round, to say the least. Kurt’s strikes actually seem to be doing some damage, he’s learned to dodge the strikes of Mongkut. He also appears to have mastered the art of “feeling the air move before it does”; this is an actual line uttered by Durand during the fight. The energy of the room shifts as well with cheers of “Nuk Su Cao” punctuating the arena. As we gear up for the final blow, a flip kick to the chin. The fight ends with Mongkut dead on the ground.

Outside of the final fight, the fights in this movie didn’t really do it for me. There were too many changes in speed for my enjoyment, and there didn’t seem to be a ton of trust between the fighters as there could have been. Obviously, the stunt performers trust each other; they wouldn’t do some of the crazy things they do if they didn’t. But there didn’t seem to be as much cohesiveness between the fighters as in a Scott Adkins movie, or a Michael Jai White film. It made it harder for me to focus on what I was watching, to be honest. I’m also not a huge fan of the protagonist walking through hordes of nameless henchmen and dispatching them as easily as flicking the head off a dandelion. The fact that this movie reuses this trope twice bugged me tremendously.

The final fight did meet my expectations though. There is always something satisfying about a David v Goliath type fight in a film. Kurt having to use the environment around him to help defeat Mongkut was a nice touch also: from swinging around on the bunting to get extra momentum and height, to choking him out with a chain, it really plays up the need to use whatever you can to defeat your opponent. The “kill shot” of a backflip kick to the chin was a pretty sweet finisher too!

All in all this film didn’t really do it for me as much as I hoped that it would. It hit all the points I feel a Kickboxer film should hit: Awesome training montage, Van Damme showing he’s amazing, and a line so rude that it hearkened me back to Tong Po’s “you bleed like Mylee…” Which gave Kurt a little extra motivation to beat the bad guy. But screwy camera speeds and an opening sequence that evoked Sin City a little too much for my tastes really kept me from becoming engrossed in this film. I give it a 2.5 out of 5 on the Goodall Rating Scale. For more information on this film head on over to IMDB.

You can check out the last It’s Movie Time! entry, Boyka: Undisputed here.