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Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back

In a small midwestern or southern town (we’re never told where specifically but it was filmed in Indiana and Ohio) there’s a group of white supremacists wreaking havoc.  They just murdered the local pastor and burned down his church.  They also hassle the other residents, recruit the aimless youth and generally make life miserable for everyone.

So how the hell does Tommy Lee figure into this?  He strolls into town to visit his sister, Karen (Anzu Lawson (lots of TV shit)), who also happens to be married to the sheriff (Christopher McDonald (Dutch, Happy Gilmore)).  The neo-Nazi assholes attack Karen and plan to overtake the entire township so now Tommy must stop them.

By the third film Phillip Rhee is the only original cast member left.  He also produced each one so he used his leverage to put himself in the director’s chair.  The results aren’t, shall we say, the best.  Number three is cheap looking and feeling.  This isn’t necessarily an automatic negative though and Rhee does what he can to squeeze the most out of what he has.  The action has enough of a mix with martial arts, a motorcycle chase and a shootout finale.  Rhee even manages to put himself in a clown costume for one fight scene with the red nose, large shoes and everything.  He also likes to throw his adversaries into objects like tables, bookcases and windows which adds value, impact and fun to the brawls.  The ending has a fair amount of explosions and puts forth a nice effort to make it exciting.  All appreciated.

However, there are definitely some problems.  The movie’s views on racism are sorta child-like.  The townsfolk are either hardcore racists or totally against racism without any shades of gray.  And the worst scene in the film is during a townhall where the local school teacher (Gina Gershon (she did this the same year as Showgirls)) gives an embarrassingly oversimplified speech about how racism is bad and racists don’t understand the true spirit of America.

Unsurprisingly the script was for a different movie until Phillip Rhee made it part of the Best of the Best franchise.  The only time when a character mentions something from a previous installment is when Tommy confesses to the aforementioned school teacher/love interest that he killed a man years ago (Brakus) which is why he quit teaching martial arts.

And this brings up an interesting development for Tommy.  In the first film he was afraid of his own abilities because he knew he could kill Dae Han if he let himself.  Then in part II he commands Brakus to stay down during their fight but of course the brute doesn’t listen so Tommy is forced to take his life (spoiler).  Now in Part 3 he still holds back on killing anyone for a while but by the third act he seems to have gotten over this because he murders a number of folks.

That final fight is bullshit too.  Tommy is a world champion martial artist but some asswipe neo-Nazi can go toe to toe with him?  I don’t think so.  And those other neo-Nazis rallied around the two of them would never let Tommy walk out of there alive.

So yea, the whole thing doesn’t really come together.  Apart from not being as good as its predecessors and taking on a generic subtitle they switched from roman numeral numbering to Arabic numbering and that’s just silly.  You had a good thing going Bests but you fucked it up.

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