Bloodsport (1988) Review

Bloodsport (1988)

Bloodsport follows soldier Frank Dux, who, in order to honor his ailing master, enters the Kumite, a highly secret and extremely violent martial-arts competition in Hong Kong. 

Every now and then, a film comes along where  you genuinely wonder to yourself, how on Earth did this ever popular? If Bloodsport isn’t the epitome of that question, I don’t know what is. Lacking in literally any story whatsoever, you’d be an idiot to think this is anything more than an underground exhibition tournament played out to terrible pacing, atrocious acting, and a story that is as ridiculous as it sounds. Being the cult classic it is, I don’t know why I expected something more, but I’m honestly amazed that I made it past the first 15 minutes (which is honest to God, the worst acting I’ve ever witnessed), though not getting much better from then on. 

If there is anything even slightly redeeming, it is the Kumite itself, chock full of fighters  “battling” it out in montage after montage of bloody, brutal action. Van Damme, already an accomplished martial artist by this point, certainly showed just how acrobatic and theatrical he could be in the ring (somewhat making up for not being able to understand a word he says), but the weird pacing always ends up slowing down any built up momentum, leading to a majority of the fights to feel unearned, uninspired, and frankly a bit boring, though some credit goes out to Yeung and Van Damme’s final showdown. 

We get a truly dreadful cast, starring Philip Chan, Kenneth Siu, Roy Chiao, Norman Burton, Forest Whitaker, Leah Ayres, Donald Gibb, Bolo Yeung, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme, in his breakout role, has the looks and incredible physical prowess needed for the meat of the film, almost making up for his complete inability to deliver more than a very basic performance, but he, like every bit of this cast, is stilted and impressively awful in their acting, making this “classic” almost unwatchable at times. 

Based on the (allegedly, and heavily disputed) true story of Frank Dux, Bloodsport, directed by Newt Arnold, is a shockingly corny and painful martial arts film that while (somehow) giving rise to Van Damme and the underground fight genre, is nothing more than lazy, brainless action that suffers from stilted subplots and loathsome acting. 

4.8/10