Best of the Best

The US puts together a martial arts team to fight against the Koreans in South Korea for some sort of official title.  A few inner demons are wrestled with along the way and by the end they’re all sorted out.  It’s as straight forward as you can get.

There are a few quirky things about this picture though.  For starters I never understood why America and South Korea are the only two countries competing in this tournament.  It seems like the contest is this one time match up because we see the assembly of the teams.  It would be incredibly weird if other fighters got their respective countries to the final round but then were swapped out for completely different people.

Also, the main characters have this strange mix and match quality to them.  Alex (Eric Roberts (Runaway Train)) is from Oregon but works in a GM car plant, Sonny (David Agresta (never did anything else)) is from Detroit but his Italian heritage makes you think more of NYC, Travis (Chris Penn (Footloose)) is from Miami but a total cowboy with the hat, boots and accent, Virgil (John Dye (two episodes of Murder She Wrote)) is from Rhode Island but a Zen Buddhist more reminiscent of a San Franciscan and Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee (Furious)) is from California and is Korean American.  Ok that last one makes sense but the rest don’t add up.

Another thing is Travis is your token dickhead character who shoots his arrogant mouth off and makes obnoxious remarks including a bunch of racist Asian shit.  What I find odd about this is how can someone this proficient in martial arts have such little respect for Asian culture?  I mean he overcomes it in the end because the movie needs him to but why give him this specific trait?  He can be an asshole in other ways to provide some tension within the team but why all the Asian slurs?

I sorta like how Coach Couzo (James Earl Jones (Three Fugitives)) is handled however.  He’s a serious hard ass who pushes his guys to their limit and for a long while you think he’s simply a miserable prick.  But the reason he trains so relentlessly is because he blames himself for Tommy’s brother’s death in a tournament years ago.  He thinks he didn’t prepare his team enough which led to the worst possible outcome.  Piling on to this is the fact that the man who dealt the death blow, Dae Han (Phillip’s brother Simon Rhee (stunt man par excellence (Blade, Escape from LA, Dark Knight Rises, Birds of Prey))), is who Tommy will face this time around.  Layers, convenient layers, but layers.

What’s kinda funny about the movie is three of the five US fighters end up not doing all that well in the final match.  Alex and Tommy kick ass with Alex even finishing his bout with one arm in a sling!  But the rest of them clearly aren’t up to the task.

This is an ok film.  It’s a light kumite jaunt that’s fun enough but nothing to write home about.