The Quest

For Jean-Claude Van Damme’s directorial debut he decided to go back to where he started, the tournament fighting subgenre (or Kumite subgenre).  You know, where dudes from all over go toe to toe in (usually) some sort of grand competition.  Van Damme had done three previous to this so he must’ve figured he would be starting with a leg up (get it? (‘cause he kicks people a lot)).  And I have to say that I quite enjoyed his rookie dive.

For starters it’s ambitious as fuck.  Instead of setting the movie in modern times like everyone else Van Damme went for a period piece by rolling the clock back to 1925.  Think about all the extra effort you have to go through to make that work.  You need period clothing, set design, haircuts, weapons, vehicles, signage and a million other things.  It would’ve been so much easier to set it in 1996 and save all that time and money.  I can only guess Van Damme is either a big old fashioned adventure stories fan with scruffy fellas globetrotting and running into fanciful characters and situations, or he really thought the 20’s backdrop would elevate the material.  Both are plausible and actually the earlier time period is a little cool.  I guess I’m just a sucker.

Another ambitious undertaking are all the locations required for the story.  You start out with a montage of different fighters from around the world receiving invitations to the tournament, which by itself is more than you would expect from this type of film.  Then there’s Van Damme’s character, Chris Dubois, who starts out in NYC, stows away on a ship for a while, winds up in Thailand and travels across Asia to the secret location of the contest.  Again, that’s a ton of extra effort to go through for a picture with a simple and often seen concept.  But maybe that’s just it.  Since the public is very familiar with this plot by now why not try to spice it up?

The fighting is pretty good but nothing spectacular.  There isn’t a standout moment among any of the action sequences and that does hurt the film.  Van Damme and his crew didn’t come up with any gimmicks as clever as the shit in his preceding works, like the partially filled pool fight in Lionheart or fists covered in smashed glass in Kickboxer.  What they tried to do here is give each of the fighters a unique style based on their country of origin.  The Brazilian guy does a lot of flips and doesn’t stop moving, the French guy only uses his fists, the Japanese guy is a sumo wrestler and etc.  While it might seem like a fun idea on paper it doesn’t come together in the final product.  Except for the last fight all of the matchups in the tournament are over quickly.  The last half hour of the movie is almost entirely brawling which is kinda cool, but with so many short battles I had a hard time getting into any particular one and didn’t find myself caring about the non-Van Damme guys.  It ended up being a blur of alright fight sequences.  Even the final showdown isn’t anything to write home about.

With that being said the entire film is fairly well done.  You get the sense that Van Damme really cares about the movie and is trying hard to craft something fun and exciting.  There are a lot of nice touches like showcasing so many different fighting styles, going for some cinematic angles and wider shots, the production design is very nice, and Van Damme constantly changes his look throughout with medium hair, buzzed cut, beard, clean shaven, clown makeup, scars, etc.  I think it’s hard to miss that a bunch of pretty thoughtful work went into this.

Doesn't it look like these stills are from four different movies?

There are some questionable choices like Roger Moore (Fire, Ice & Dynamite, A View to a Kill) who’s fun ‘n all but man, he’s a total cheeseball.  There’s an intro with Van Damme as an old man who beats up some assholes that attempt to rob the bar he’s in.  After he takes care of them the old man proceeds to tell the bartender the story of the movie.  It wasn’t necessary at all and it’s amazing that trouble finds this guy no matter where he goes or how old he gets.  All of the characters have little to no depth and are stereotyped to hell like the brassy dame reporter from NYC, the wise guy mobsters, the Irish cops, all of the participants in the tournament and so on.  The worst offense might be having a fighter from the country of Africa.  I mean they couldn’t come up with the name of an African country, any fucking African country?  That’s kinda bad.

(You could also say that James Remar (48 Hrs., The Phantom) is a bad choice because he’s such a goddamn goofy actor, especially in this, but I love the sonuvabitch.  I don’t know what it is about him but I love to watch him work.  Keep on chugging Jimmy, you’re the man.)

This is definitely the worst of Van Damme’s Kumite pictures (1. Lionheart 2. Bloodsport 3. Kickboxer 4. The Quest).  There’s certainly a B movie quality to the whole thing (high B movie though, maybe light A) which brings it down a notch or two.  Sets feel very much like sets, the personalities are caricatures, the acting is hammy and a weak score helps to drive that point home. 

But overall I had a good time watching this again.  Van Damme put forth a strong effort and that shines through.  He seemed to take the idea of going on a quest for supreme victory in the fighting world to heart by whisking away the audience to exotic locales and exposing them to many different characters.  Interestingly the film works better as an adventure movie than a Kumite movie in my opinion.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend The Quest (bland title by the way), only if you want to check out what a Van Damme directed movie is like (better than you’d think, very competent but nothing special).