My Boyfriend Makes Me Watch Ridiculous Movies: Bloodsport

Rico has a list on his phone of movies we are required to watch together. I’m feeling pretty satisfied that I can accept whatever he throws at me after watching Team America: World Police. I don’t know what any of these movies are about, but we’re here to watch them and I’m here to judge.

“I think it’s time for a movie that changed my life,” he tells me as he clacks the stylus on his Wii. Amazon is ripe with movies to rent, and I know Rico has found that he’s looking for when he starts laughing maniacally.

“What movie this week?” I ask, innocent to the terrible events ahead.

“So, you have to understand, this is the first movie I ever saw that had like a martial arts competition or anything.”

“Which movie?”

“Bloodsport.”

I’m confused because I’ve never heard of this before, and suddenly the skepticism hits me hard. Rico proceeds to tell me about this underground competition called the “Kumite” and how you can either tap out to fight to the death; hence the name “bloodsport.”

But I am not prepared for the assault on my culture. Not at all. It’s not even the fact that no two people can decide how to pronounce “kumite” (BTW, it’s ‘koo-mee-teh’. Not f-ing ‘koo-muh-teh’ or ‘koh-muh-te’), or that the Asian cast is miscast (We don't all look the same, I swear), or that this looks like Karate Kid on so many steroids its veins are bursting.

It’s that they set up this whole thing as an ancient Japanese rite, and it’s been co-opted by the Chinese underground. ಠ_ಠ

Supposedly, this is a real event that happens. Frank Dux (the real-life one, not the one in the movie) has gone on record several times over the years claiming that this underground society exists, even though it’s strictly kept secret. I mean, I’m no expert, but I’m sure that the Black Dragon Society doesn’t appreciate you making an entire movie about your ultimate underdog win in a secret, forbidden, illegal human-cock-fighting event. Just sayin’.

But beyond the incredibility of this movie, I am ready to give it a chance. My vice to choice to get through this movie is not wine, but beer: a mini keg Rico purchased for just such an occasion. Rico and I clink our Cyanide & Happiness pint glasses, and sit back to enjoy our meat-lover’s pizza. If we’re going to watch a testosterone-filled movie, we might as well have some brolicious food to go with it.

I’m trying, okay?

The beginning of this movie is a bit confusing at first. We get introduced to Frank Dux, a military operative with super special training. I don’t believe it’s ever fully explained what he is, but it’s obviously really important. Why, you ask? Well, because while Frank is training on his own, he gets a visit from someone who is going to escort him to their boss’s office. Frank asks to grab a shower beforehand. He’s dripping in sweat and I can only imagine what kind of stench is coming off of those glistening tight muscles.

In the privacy of the showers, Frank makes his escape in the steam and is long gone before his fellow soldier is aware he’s missing. This causes panic! I mean, the US Military can’t afford to lose such a valuable asset like Frank Dux! They put so much stock into one man!

Seriously? What can this one man do that others can’t? Like, is his martial arts training so out of this world that NO ONE can come close to Frank? I have no idea, but the government is going to send their best people to search for Frank and stop him from entering the Kumite.

Oh yeah, the FBI knows about Frank’s plan to enter the Kumite in Hong Kong this year. Apparently. Dude doesn’t know how to keep a goddamn secret apparently.

Anyway, Frank’s first stop is to his old teacher’s house, Senzo Tanaka, who is on his deathbed it seems. Mrs. Tanaka answers the door and goes to wake her husband, giving Frank ample time to look at a katana and think back… back into his past… when he first laid eyes on the sword…

I don’t know if there have ever been WORSE child/teen actors. The kid who’s playing the younger Van Damme has one expression, and that’s “what emotion am I supposed to have?” I know this was made in the 80s, and acting was different then… but for crying out loud the guy could at least look a little more frightened. He and his friends DID just break into a house and tried to steal a family heirloom, and his friends just ditched him. Instead of running (you know, the SMART move), Frank takes his sweet time putting the sword back on its display, then gets his ass kicked by Mr. Tanaka’s son.

This is where the story starts to make some contorted twists and turns to make it seem like Frank is an awesome guy, but is an underdog character. Let me explain.

Mr. Tanaka sees something deep in Frank, the soul of a warrior. Instead of turning Frank over to the police, he offers a deal. Mr. Tanaka goes to Frank’s father and tries to convince him to let Frank “train with his son” because Frank is interested in the “martial sciences” (not martial arts. It’s a science now). After all, they’re both immigrants and came to this great country to fulfill their dreams and support their families. They’re both growing young men, and young men need training in order to grow.

What?

It’s just bad writing all around, okay. ALL of the dialogue in this movie is garbage and I want to punch someone in the face for allowing this movie to get made. RICO!!!

I guess Frank’s dad agrees, and Frank begins to train. The only problem is, Frank ends up being a human punching bag for Tanaka Junior. Until at school Tanaka Junior gets beaten up by bullies and Frank shows up, throws like ONE punch, and the bullies go running. Why is this wrong, you ask? Please reference the previous parts where I said FRANK GOT HIS ASS KICKED BY TANAKA’S SON AND KEEPS GETTING HIS ASS HANDED TO HIM. Also, what kind of bullies run away at the first sign of trouble? Like, half the playground is there watching the fight. This has probably happened before and there’s no way Frank is enough of a threat at this point to make three or four boys go running.

Also, this is apparently the perfect moment for Tanaka Jr. to tell Frank that someday he’ll fight in the Kumite and make his father proud of him. Because, you know, that’s what you tell someone you called a goddamn “round eye” in the scene a minute ago (If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s the derogatory phrase for a white person. Kinda like y’all call us “slanty eye”). I guess this is the first time Frank has ever heard of the Kumite, so it’s important…?

Well, it doesn’t really matter. Tanaka Jr. is dead now. No idea how, but he dead.

Insert touching moment between Mr. Tanaka and Frank, whereby Frank convinces Tanaka to keep training him so that one day he can be in the Kumite. This doesn’t go over well the first time Frank suggests it, since apparently this martial arts can only be passed down father to son, and you must be Japanese to learn it ಠ_ಠ Uhhhh, when was that a rule? And why would this particular style be limited to family members? That seems like a great way to see your style die out.

In fairness to this scene, whoever was the cultural liaison here did a fabulous job with the Tanaka family and the altar to the son. Also, while the writing and the logic are bad, Tanaka does take that bad policy to its logical end. He’s distraught over the loss of his son, and he does mention the fact that without an heir his style of martial arts will die out. He doesn’t even think twice about it.

Anyway, cue the obligatory training montage.

This is the first set of Van-Damme-splits for this movie. Oh just you wait…

First, there’s Ray Jackson. Beer drinking, chick loving, bear brawling, dumb-ass American with nothing but brute strength and “charm.” Tact is not in his vocabulary whether it’s picking up a random Chinese girl on the bus, trying to impress people by using a technique he doesn’t know, or fighting in a tournament that's best known for its dead contestants. If you’ve ever watched the WWE and dumb down his intelligence, you’ve got a good idea of who Ray Jackson is.

Eventually, after Frank defeats Ray in a video arcade martial arts game, they become best buds. They will be best friends forever, and of course, they’re both entering the Kumite! How fortunate that they were staying at the same hotel…

Apparently, ALL of the Kumite participants are staying at the same hotel. And there are just guys waiting to meet and greet the participants to get them to the Kumite every day and on time. For the record, I think Frank only makes it on time on ONE occasion… But that aside, it’s a convenient plot device to make sure that all the characters get introduced in relatively the same amount of time.

Then, there’s the love interest, Janice Kent.

She’s a plucky young journalist bent on getting the scoop on the Kumite. She knows next to nothing about fighting, Asian culture, or undercover journalism apparently. Trying her best to win over some men she thinks are here for the Kumite, she disarms them with a “hey, I know there’s this illegal fighting tournament that none of us are supposed to know about, but, like, let’s talk about it openly at the hotel bar and tell me how you got invited so I can get invited.” I also love how her opener to this conversation is “Is this your first time to Hong Kong?” when they are CLEARLY Chinese. All right, say that all Asians look the same. Would you not immediately assume that if you’re in Hong Kong, in a hotel, and there are Asians all around that they’d be locals? If you listen carefully at the end of that conversation, a friend of theirs comes over and speaks to them in some dialect of Chinese (honestly not my language, but I grew up with enough Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese spoken around me by friends to know it wasn’t any other Asian language).

Well, don’t worry, her idiotic nature doesn’t only extend to her journalism and investigation. She’s also tactless and dumb enough to verbally assault one of the contestants who wants to get in her pants… You know, a guy willing to kill or be killed over a fighting tournament. Smart, Miss Kent, very smart. Oh, don’t worry, she’s the damsel in distress type too. Frank swoops in and saves her, willing to “fight for her” (but it sounds way more creepy than that, almost like he’s engaging this guy to a fight for mating rights or something). But, of course, if they fight outside of the Kumite, both of them will be taken out of the tournament. So they gamble. Young Grasshopper, take this pebble from my hand…

I kid you not, this is the gamble. Frank bets he can swipe a coin from the guy’s hand before he can close it. If he does, he “gets the girl” (Seriously, mating rights). And succeeds. Obviously. Duh.

And so the romantic plot begins… with Janice divulging that she’s trying to get a story on the Kumite and wants access, even when it’s strictly NO PRESS ALLOWED IN THE ARENA. The brains on this one ಠ_ಠ

Well, don’t worry. She eventually gets around that by dressing up all pretty and being arm candy for some rich guy who’s there to bet on the fights. By the way, the way that Frank describes the seriousness of the Kumite, it is indicated that this tournament isn’t for the public. It’s really all for the fighters… then why is there a crowd of people cheering and waving their tickets in the air like they just don’t care?

Helmer and Rawlins are the two FBI agents assigned to bring Frank back, and they are America’s finest. And what I mean by finest is that they do most things by the books. And what I mean by doing things by the books is that they get absolutely nothing done and are bumbling idiots.

They first arrive at the Tanaka residence long after Frank has left, so they’re already one step behind. Next, they show up to Hong Kong and inform the police there that they’re looking for Frank because he’s fighting in the Kumite. In my professional assessment, Inspector Chen totally knows what’s going on, he’s being paid off by the mafia to keep things quiet, and is keeping the FBI off the scent for now. Chen pretends not to know what the Kumite is at first, says his men are overworked, and suggests that Frank may have already left Hong Kong: “Asia is a very big place, you know.”

Dude is the smartest character in the whole goddamn movie and plays Helmer and Rawlins like a couple of fiddles.

At the opportune moment, Chen tells the two FBI agents where Frank is staying (this is, of course, after the first day of the tournament and it seems that Frank, a westerner, may actually have a shot at winning the Kumite). Helmer and Rawlins arrive, a short exchange is spoken between them, and just as they about to “use 50 thousand volts” on Frank, Ray does what any best friend would do. He clothes-lines two FBI agents so that Frank can run away.

Good thing this is a movie because Ray would have been thrown in the slammer for a long time for that stunt.

And insert the whimsical chase scene through Hong Kong. Obviously, Frank outsmarts Helmer and Rawlins and gets away. Duh.

Let’s talk about our ultimate bad guy for a moment. His name is Chong Li and is from Korea (PS. All the Korean kids I went to school with spelled it “Lee” and the Chinese kids were “Li”, so…). The reason Chong Li is so badass is that he’s won this Kumite before, and he’s killed. In fact, he looks like he kind of enjoys killing even when his opponent has surrendered. He doesn’t have too many lines spoken, but we know he doesn’t like losing. Probably among his least favorite things in the world, I’d say.

We get to see him fight the first day, and he gets a world record K.O. That’s pretty impressive and very fast… But then Frank gets a faster K.O. This makes Chong Li vewy, vewy angwy.

On the second day, it’s Ray’s turn to fight Chong Li. Ray is over-confident that he’ll knock out Chong in a matter of minutes because Ray is a friggin’ beast. However, it seems that strategy does win over brute strength and Ray gets his lights knocked out. Almost literally. After Chong has won the fight, he taunts Frank by taking Ray’s sweatband and wiggling it up in the air like “heehee come and get it.” Ray gets sent to the hospital because his head trauma is actually that bad. Frank promises to get payback for this mess.

At the end of three days worth of fighting, Chong Li and Frank Dux fight each other. Did you expect anything less?

In the end, Rawlins and Helmer decide if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, Frank has slept with Janice and we’ve all seen his lovely butt, Chong Li is even more of an asshole because he cheats, Ray is okay, and Frank wins. Dude, if you didn’t catch that ending spoiler in, like, the first page of this review, that’s your fault.

“So, what did you think?” Rico asks me.

“I liked the part when Van Damme actually pulls down his underwear before he pulls them back up,” I say. I’m not sure how many pints I’ve had at this point, but that keg is looking awfully empty.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Janice is a dumbshit.”

“And?”

“I think Frank Dux is a liar, but whatever.”

“AND??”

“The fighting was actually pretty fucking cool.”

“But you’re still writing this off as a terrible movie, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s not terrible! It’s ridiculous, sure, but it’s not terrible!”

After a short, drunken argument, I concede to rename this series “My Boyfriend Makes Me Watch Ridiculous Movies.” Happy Rico?