I think everyone knew it was only a matter of time before I hit this bad boy up. I was avoiding it, and I'm sure you were hoping I wouldn't go there. In all actuality, for a film completely sauteed in wrong sauce, this could've been worse: it could've been National Treasure or the new Indiana Jones.
Kickboxer 5 is a movie with little to no coherency. Mark Dacascos is a champion kickboxer who never does any kickboxing. Anyway, his protege, who does, wins a belt, and then is told by some dudes working for a South African that the belt is void unless he joins their new federation. If you don't join, you die. Dacascos kills one of the guys after they kill his protege, and the South African gets some dude out of jail who also knows martial arts to kill Dacascos. That plan backfires when he takes the money and runs back to South Africa, and it only gets worse when Dacascos goes too, and the two crash the South African's casino night.
Thirteen or so years ago this movie seemed like utter crap, and even though it still is, the years have been good to it, at least in my estimation. Sure, it's ludicrous, predictable, and hella cheesy, but it has a certain sense of charm that we seldom see in today's bad actioners. Maybe I'm just getting nostalgic for mullets and bowl cuts, and anyone reading this should probably bear that in mind; but am I wrong for taking this over the new Indiana Jones?
I don't know who cast Dacascos as a kickboxer, or what Dacascos thought when his agent called to tell him he'd be playing a kickboxer, but he was no kickboxer. Even someone with the most rudimentary knowledge of martial arts like me could tell that. I'm assuming Sasha Mitchell was too knee deep in Step By Step to want to do this, and if I'm Dacascos a payday is a payday, so I'd take it-- and it's not like he wasn't any good either, he was great-- he was just entirely wrong for this role. And it wasn't funny like Connery playing an Egyptian Spainiard with a Scotish accent.
His partner is played by a dude named George Meed. The name may mean something to the more experienced bad movie watchers among you, but mostly he's only done bad TV shows and soap operas. As far as films covered here, he starred and co-wrote I Am Omega, which reunited him with Mark Dacascos. In that one he was a baddie, and we only saw the tip of his martial arts iceberg; but here he definitely kicks some ass. I wonder if he kicks ass on soap operas too.
This idea of killing fighters who won't join a fight league is beyond ludicrous. There's no way in hell the people writing this were serious. I refuse to believe that. I like silly just as much as the next guy, and I thought this was definitely funny, but come on, have a modicum of self-respect. Is this an action film or a parody of an action film?
You may have noticed that I mentioned the new Indiana Jones movie in here. Quite a few posts ago, when the film first came out, I vowed that I would never spend any money on it, because I saw it simply as a cash grab. I then proceeded like a dumbass to buy the Indiana Jones Whopper at Burger King. Anyway, my roommate rented the film, and I watched some of it with her. There was one scene early on where Harrison Ford throws gun powder in the air, and it flies in the direction of some thing they want to find. I did what any self respecting person seeing that would do: I laughed out loud. My roommate got mad, and I asked her, because she's a Lost fan, if she was upset that I was making fun of it because it looked like a Smoke Monster. Here's the point I'm getting at: Kickboxer 5 might be ridiculous, but it's really no more ludicrous than some of the crap we're sold in the mainstream that people eat up. Which do you think is sillier, Mark Dacascos as a kickboxer that doesn't kickbox, or a Smoke Monster?
You can get this on Netflix through their Watch Instantly service, and I think that's the best way to see this, especially if you can view them on a TV. It's plenty bad and plenty fun to watch, but if you spend more than a dollar on it, you'll feel ripped off.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110256/
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