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Kickboxer 2 Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

I wasn’t a big fan of the first Kickboxing film and unfortunately the sequel also gets a thumbs down too. I would say it is an improvement over the first but not enough so where I would be able to defend it. It suffers from a lot of serious plot issues like adding a sour note to the first film and overall just going for maximum edge there. It doesn’t even have the solid ost from the first film so things get tricky here.

The movie starts off by introducing us to David, another brother related to the main characters from the first film. He has skill in close quarters combat but isn’t quite as strong as the earlier two. He doesn’t fight anymore, however his gym isn’t doing well so he is forced to unretire. He’s still good enough to win his fights but the main problem is Tong Po has returned. It turns out that he murdered the main characters from the first film including the heroine and now he’s here for David. He has his goons murder a child and then they murder David’s protégé. Now the lead has to fight him but does he have the skills to beat this fighter?

The whole plot feels like something out of an edgy fanfic. “Yo what if…..the villain from the first film got better and murdered everybody!!” I mean cmon now, I know a villain can have a revenge story too but having the heroes lose so cheaply off screen is rough. We see someone get shot so it seems like Tong Po just used underhanded tactics to win. He would have needed to since the last main character heavily surpassed him by the end of the first film. It makes a very strong argument for why you need to completely bump off the villain after a point. Letting him stay alive just opened the door for things to go south.

It’s just such a bad plot point though. Then for extra edge we have the whole kid thing. So there are a bunch of kids that look up to David and want to get stronger. One in particular had a bit of a bad attitude but he was trying his best. Well, a group of fighters attack in the night and when burning down the dojo they take out a kid too. It’s clear this is for maximum drama and edge but the film really didn’t need that. I would argue if anything it’s actually a net negative. The kids didn’t need to be here and surely having his brothers murdered is already enough of a motivation for David.

The edgy backstory also hurts some characters. Namely Xian because with his daughter dead the guy should be out for blood right? He’s an expert fighter to the point where he is the world’s best coach so why not take down Tong Po himself? I never get why the masters can get so complacent when the stakes are this level of personal. Instead he’ll train David and said he will sacrifice the guy if necessary. That’s great, but go handle your business. He should have absolutely been doing whatever it takes to bring that guy down instead of just waiting until David was forced into the action.

It doesn’t make any sense. What else doesn’t make sense? Everyone sitting by as Tong Po shows up and murdered someone in the ring. This isn’t Thailand this time. It’s taking place in the US and yet the villains still have enough clout to break all of the rules as often as they want and get away with literal murder? I don’t care how rich the villains are, that doesn’t make any sense. If the protégé was smart he would have taken the tournament crown by default since the opponent wasn’t smart. Even then he should have won the fight early on when Tong Po was clearly cheating. The ref would call it out each time but not do anything about it so what’s the point there? It’s just a really bad look all around and it’s why the film’s plot is so forced.

I feel like the writers had the dilemma they wanted to get to and knew the conclusion but didn’t know how to organically get the plot there. As a result it’s all rather contrived and the film feels very try-hardish. David’s a decent main character but it would be nice if he could have stepped up a bit sooner. A really rough moment was when the invaders attacked at night. David’s an expert hand to hand fighter so couldn’t he have fought back at least a little bit rather than going down immediately and getting beaten up so badly? I didn’t like how easily he went down there, night or not.

Tong Po also doesn’t look as impressive here for obvious reasons. He claims to want honor yet he goes around taking down stronger opponents with guns? Then in the final fight he is only able to do well when there is a hostage at stake. The instant David can fight the guy goes down like a sack of bricks. It’s like he can’t fight at a very high level at all. In the first film at least it was clear that he was still an incredibly difficult opponent to take down. He would cheat for sure but the guy legitimately did have a lot of skills at his disposal. Here he’s just a chump.

Also while the final fight is fairly long, the power levels don’t make a lot of sense. Put it this way, David is getting completely smashed throughout the whole fight. He’s got tons of broken bones and is coughing up blood since he was told not to fight back due to the hostage stuff going on. So finally when they tell him to fight, he’s able to crush Tong Po just like that? People underestimate how bad those injuries will be acting up while you’re fighting. There’s no way you’re going to just be able to keep fighting as if you’re going into the battle fresh. At best it means Tong Po is just incredibly weak but that’s not possible from what we saw. At least not to that extent so the film overplayed its hand in trying to make the stakes high. Again it’s just not great writing.

Overall, Kickboxer 2 may have beaten the first film but that’s not saying a whole lot. It’s still got huge chronic problems all throughout. In general the kids weren’t needed as their scenes don’t even fit in with the rest of the film. The film’s rather serious and dark while their moments are trying to be a little too upbeat. Perhaps it could work if the film was written better but it wasn’t built for this. In the end I would say to just avoid this film. As bad as the first film was, at least the ending was satisfying but this film completely takes that away and makes it moot so it’s a double negative.

Overall 4/10

Kickboxer Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time to look at a film that by all accounts should have been really good but instead it fumbled throughout the experience until it crashed in the end. It’s a shame because the template for this kind of film isn’t all that hard to follow. Just deliver with some good fight scenes and you will have a fun revenge film that works all around. The title got sequels so I guess enough people liked it, but it was a big thumbs down for me.

The movie starts with Kurt’s brother Eric deciding to take on the Thailand top kickboxing fighter. Eric has always been the world champion but one guy claimed that Thailand had the real strongest. So Eric shows up and unfortunately he is badly beaten by Tong to the point where he is crippled for life. Kurt’s upset since the guy was cheating but there is nothing to be done since this scene is basically an underground arena. Kurt will have to train with the local elder Xian to get strong enough to avenge his brother but Tong has more tricks up his sleeve. Who will come out on top!?

There’s a lot of problems with this very contrived setup. The first one is that Eric basically just heads off to Thailand to have a fight that is borderline unsanctioned at the drop of a hat. Really, all it takes is one guy mentioning that there is someone stronger and Eric leaves? I find this a bit hard to believe because Eric is so cocky that he would probably insist on the challenger coming to his turf. That’s the way that these things are supposed to work after all. Rocky did it right where after you lose then you go to the enemy turf.

Additionally as the world champion you’d expect Eric to have press agents and a lot of media attention. Surely they would have flagged if something was wrong with the Thailand site right? They would have had their own security and everything. Instead Eric and Kurt were basically by themselves. You could say that they left in absolute secrecy for the fight but I have my doubts on that and the stadium was all set up for the fight so some reporters would have heard about it. The entirely plot just doesn’t hold up when you think about it.

It makes the beatdown frustrating with Tong openly cheating throughout the entire match. The refs don’t care since they were bought off as apparently Tong basically owns the place. Even the cops don’t dare go against him and again…there’s no way the fight would be held in such a corrupt place. It really doesn’t make any sense and will just have you shaking your head the whole time. Then even with the cheating how did Eric go down so fast? I would have liked to have seen him get some hits in.

Of course you know that he’s going to lose the fight but you could still make it a little interesting. The more lopsided the match becomes, the less likely it is that Kurt will be able to convincingly avenge him. I’d expect better from the world champion. As a character Eric was good though. I did like his confidence and ultimately he was ready to support Kurt later on. He was initially reluctant about letting Kurt get into the ring but that made sense since he knew first hand how brutal things could get.

Then the film is goes for extra edge later on as Tong goes after the heroine. The film could have stopped with a threat or something but no it goes all the way with this plot so the damage was already done. Kurt only finds out about this near the very end of the film and of course it’s a moment used to ignite his rage but this is always the lowest hanging fruit you can use. A film should never use this plot because there’s just no reason for it and after a while all the edge only serves to hurt the film rather than help it.

Additionally the film sacrifices any semblance of realism by the end. So Kurt can’t go all out for a while due to some circumstances so Tong is beating up on him for quite a while. Keep in mind that just a few blows were enough to cripple Eric completely. He lands dozens upon dozens of hits on Kurt and those hits are amped up since he rolled his fist inside of glass chunks. So Kurt is really feeling every punch and the guy just keeps landing these blows.

By the time Kurt is able to fight back he should not even be able to stand. I think the movie was going for some Rocky vibes here as the lead would often get beat up over and over again before landing a counter attack but the movies were never this exaggerated. Then the resulting fight is so one sided that it makes 0 sense again. It’s not like Tong lost all of his skills so why he is just a punching bag now?

It’s like this was a super basic revenge story written by someone who just knew the genre but not how to get there. So pick the easy methods to get Kurt really mad, have him get beat up a while and then beat up the other guy. There is no restraint or reason to any of this and so it really doesn’t work. Of course it’s nice to see the villain get what’s coming to him but it sure does take a super long time to get there. Too long if you ask me.

At least one nice thing I can say about the film is that the soundtrack is good. There are a lot of really solid themes playing here and they fit the action scenes. So the movie put in some work there. The choreography can also be good when it’s finally time for a real fight. It’s just a shame that there isn’t much time for that since usually one of the 2 fighters can’t fight back. Either because he’s completely outmatched or because there is a hostage around. Having more actual fights would have been nice.

Kurt’s a good main character and I did appreciate that he did his best to avenge Eric. I would have had him start off with a little more skill just so that it would be more believable in the end though. It was referenced that he knew how to fight a little and was just sloppy but having him land a hit on Tong during his first outburst or something would have gone a long way.

Xian’s not nearly as good. He’s an old master and yet he did nothing to protect his niece when she was being threatened for years? He says he was worried they’d take it out on her but so then you just make sure to finish off all of the villains and keep her close. Not doing anything is of no help. Mylee is also nice enough but she definitely gets the short end of the stick since she is basically used as rage bait here. She didn’t deserve any of this.

Winston is a guy who helps out and gets Kurt on the right track. He’s had a rough past but is doing his best to get past it. The guy delivers when it counts even if it does take a while for the payoff. Finally there’s Tong who makes for a pretty bad villain. The guy isn’t even brave enough to fight his own battles and resorts to asking his goons for help in the end. If he at least had the dignity to fight his own battles and didn’t go after Mylee then he could have been a reasonable villain but in the end it was not to be.

Overall, Kickboxer is a film I would say to avoid. It just gets way too dark during this adventure ad takes things a step too far. If it was satisfied with being a solid action film then that could have really gone over well for the film but instead it even added some animal violence like when the dog was attacked. I’m telling you, anything the film could do to try and give the main character more fuel for rage, it would do it. Truly a shame.

Overall 1/10