By Tony Frame. Contains spoilers.

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Kickboxer is one of my comfort movies. It conjures up a lot of memories of my teens, of that innocence, and of the dreams I once had. It paved the way for Jean-Claude Van Damme being my first real role model. I’ve been a fan of him ever since.

I saw the movie in the summer of what I think was 1990. I fell in love with martial arts movies as a direct result of taking Karate lessons when I was about nine or ten years old. I continued the lessons all the way through to my early teens. Enter the Dragon was the first real fighting movie that made a huge impression on me. After that I would watch and re-watch any movie with elaborate fight scenes in them. Movies like No Retreat, No Surrender and Big Trouble in Little China left me mesmerised. The latter of which (with its supernatural elements) blew my mind, as I was also a huge horror fan!

Images courtesy of IMDB

It was in the summer of 1990 (boy, was that a good summer!) that I rented Kickboxer and then Bloodsport back to back without knowing who Jean-Claude Van Damme was, or that he was actually in both of them. After seeing those movies I was an overnight fan of the muscles from Brussels and I would watch his films many times over. His kicks were unlike anything I’d seen before.

Fast forward to the winter of 1991 when I managed to finally—finally!—buy my own copy of Kickboxer on VHS (you had to wait about a year to purchase a movie after it was in the cinema!). This was a pivotal moment for me and I still remember it like it was yesterday: It was about a week or so before Christmas (I had finished school for the holiday season) and I had just done some shopping with my mum in the mall. I had bought the video of Kickboxer (using money I was probably gifted from one of my aunts in a Christmas card) from Rainbow Records; a small boutique that had a good eclectic mix of movies and music for all tastes. When we got outside it was snowing, and we began heading home (it was only about a fifteen walk). I remember us going past the old Livingston Development Corporation building (a six-storey red-bricked monolithic block from the 1970’s) and looking down at the slushy snow on the ground, which was riddled with sunken footprints left from the other shoppers. I then looked at the prized video of Kickboxer I had in my hand and read the blurb on the back of the sleeve and looked at the stills from the movie on the box. I was so eager to get home and watch it. I can still recall that warm feeling of contentment that one gets when life is good. And the comfort and whimsical magic of the snow seemed to amplify that feeling.

I watched the film that afternoon, in the living room, sitting on the floor next to the radiator, getting toasty, as the snow continued to fall outside. The lights of the Christmas tree behind me twinkled like gemstones. It was bliss; a cosy festive afternoon watching an extremely violent martial arts movie. What more could a teenage boy ask for?

Kickboxer is a very good martial arts movie in many ways despite the clichés. It has the oldest ingredient one needs in order to become a classic martial arts movie – revenge. Pure and simple. Van Damme plays Kurt Sloane, ringside trainer to his champion Kickboxer brother, Eric Sloane. When Eric decides to fight Tong Po (a Thai champ) on his own turf, things really don’t go as planned! The first scene that we are introduced to Tong Po (played by Jean-Claude’s childhood friend, Michael Qissi) is an iconic moment in martial arts movie history. It’s prior to the fight in the locker room when Van Damme has to go and find some ice to prep his brother’s warm-up. As Jean-Claude walks down the corridors of the fight arena he can hear an incessant banging noise echoing throughout the building: boom…boom…boom!

Wondering what on earth is causing this noise he gets closer and closer to it and then stumbles open its origin right in front of his very eyes. It’s Tong Po, in his locker room, practising kicks with his bare legs on one of the stone columns supporting the roof! Plaster falls from the ceiling. Van Damme’s eyes are wide like saucers. His jaw drops to the floor as he sees the inhumane strength that Tong Po has conditioned himself with. You just know then and there that Kurt Sloane’s brother is about to have a very, very bad day! And so he goes and warns his bro in the dressing room, but he doesn’t listen and thinks the craziness of his opponent will just add to the night’s entertainment. And so he goes ahead and fights Tong Po, and ends up getting so badly beaten that he ends up paralysed and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Cue the melodrama in the hospital and Van Damme giving the cameras his first on-screen emotionally upset moment!

Images courtesy of IMDB

So that’s the beginning of the movie (all of this is in the trailer), and thus, after his brother’s humiliating and painful loss in the ring, Van Damme then goes on a quest for revenge and seeks out the tuition of an old kickboxing master (Dennis Chan) who has become a recluse, and is hiding out in the jungle. From there the naïve Kurt Sloane gets his training, falls in love with a local village girl, and has to face the deadly Tong Po in the ring at the end of the movie. Yes, yes, yes. This is all very cliché, I know, I admit it. I’m sure Van Damme would admit it too. But this was one of the first movies to throw all those cliches into the pot back then, and it was certainly one of the first movies that did it exceedingly well, that is the point. Sometimes it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey itself.

Many things work in Kickboxer; the main cast give pretty good performances from a script that has some good humour in it and isn’t too cheesy nor dated, even now. And with the majority of the film being shot on location (a rarity nowadays with Unreal Engine), cinematographer Jon Kranhouse really makes the most of the Bangkok surroundings, especially in the training scenes which are set amongst real-life ancient ruins with spectacular Thai sunsets in the background. The subliminal score by Paul Hertzog adds an aura of ancient mystique to it, like echoes of the past whispering in the wind, whilst the soundtrack (courtesy of Stan Bush) places it firmly in the ’80s, just in case you forgot that was the decade it was made in!

Images courtesy of IMDB

And let’s not forget the last part of the movie – it concludes with one of the most iconic final fight scenes ever to grace the silver screen: Tong Po and Kurt Sloane battle it out in an ancient temple with their hands wrapped in bandages which are dipped into broken glass. The editing and multiple angles of Van Damme’s array of elbows and helicopter kicks make it a visual treat, and it really shows off his amazing and unique abilities which are still highly impressive even to this day. None of the punches nor kicks are pulled and the blows really feel like they have some bone-crunching weight behind them. The fighting abilities you had to have back then in the ’80s and ’90s couldn’t be faked if you wanted to be taken seriously. You really had to have skill, flexibility and a good technique. Attributes which take years to learn. It’s not like now where any Hollywood actor can make themselves look like they can handle themselves by using that close-combat flurry of blows and blocks and grapples that’s been done to death, in every film from Bourne to John Wick to Extraction and so on. Don’t get me wrong, some of the fight scenes in those movies do look impressive, but a lot of kudos has to go to the people behind the scenes making their actors look good because of the way those scenes are shot and choreographed, not to mention edited. In reality, Cynthia Rothrock could still kick Matt Damon and Keanu Reeves’ asses in real life.

Ultimately, Kickboxer is a movie I’ll watch once in a blue moon. And I will still thoroughly enjoy it just as much now as I did way back then. Partly because of the nostalgia it holds in my heart, but because it’s still a decent martial arts movie in a decade that was filled with loads of them, most of which fell short in comparison.

Images courtesy of IMDB

This article was updated on the 16th July 2024.