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Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Best of the Best 4: Without Warning

We just keep getting further and further into weird ass territory in this series.  This time the cops think Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee (Silent Assassins)) is involved in a counterfeiting ring (Tobin Bell (Saws), Thure Riefenstein (12 Monkeys TV show), Jessica Collins (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Sven-Ole Thorsen (On Deadly Ground)) so he must go on the run while trying to clear his name and rescue his kidnapped daughter.

While this is a standard action movie plot it’s the second sequel to not showcase a kumite.  That’s fine but I can’t quite put my finger on why this particular story is hard to swallow.  Maybe it’s because Tommy is only a martial arts competitor and teacher and not a cop or anything like that so getting caught up in something as elaborate as a funny money operation feels out of place.

Anyway, by far the strangest decision made was to give Tommy a six year old daughter.  He was never married or had kids in the previous films and the closest he came to a girlfriend was the school teacher from part 3 so this new development throws any sort of continuity out the window.  A close friend could’ve been kidnapped instead and would’ve worked fine but I guess Phillip Rhee felt the daughter from the original script before it became a Best of the Best had to remain.

There’s also a very poor setup of making you think this hard boiled cop played by Ernie Hudson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Crow) is working for the villains.  The movie leans so hard into making you wanna hate this bastard with his insensitive remarks and flippant behavior that it’s obviously a ploy.  So naturally when a different mild mannered cop that Tommy is friendly with turns out to be on the take it comes as no surprise whatsoever.

The ending though is the stupidest part (spoiler for this paragraph).  Tommy races to the airfield to try to catch the plane that the bad guys are on and he’s carrying with him a bomb in a gym bag (sorry, too much to go into right now on how Tommy acquired a bomb).  He lifts himself up in the bucket of a fire engine and throws the bomb into the wheel compartment as the plane is taking off!  The plane explodes.  The end.  Now the movie has pulled some shit up to this point but I laughed out loud at this particular moment.  And what’s even crazier is they set up Tommy’s throwing accuracy earlier in the film by having him chuck paper towel into his kitchen trash bin.  He does the whole basketball announcer shtick too, you know “he’s only got three seconds left in the game, can he make it?!” etc.

This installment is probably on par with part 3 but at the same time it’s weirder.  Like Tommy gets in a scuffle with some henchmen in a bodega and the entire store gets wrecked and one of the bad guys gets shot in the face and everything.  His friend’s daughter also gets killed in the crossfire and it’s a heavy moment because this scene gets Tommy tangled up in the plot proper.  But Tommy goes home, bakes a cake for his daughter and goofs around with her as if nothing had happened.  He can certainly keep his emotions in check when he wants to.

Generally you know you’re not dealing with the smartest film when a lot of innocent people die in it.  A move like that is extremely tricky to pull off because it alienates the audience and makes the film seem careless and disrespectful.  But that’s one big thing they went for here by having the bad guys mow down whoever’s in front of them without consideration and it doesn’t work.

Another bland subtitle, another weak Best.  The first half of the series is good though with an undeniable work of genius in part II.  We’ll always have that at least.

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