Director Newt Arnold
Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Donald Gibb, Leah Ayres, Bolo Yeung
Rated R
Score 3.5/6
When a martial arts-trained soldier learns of an underground fight-to-the-death tournament through the last words of his dying sensei, he must travel to Hong Kong while avoiding capture from his military superiors so he can fight his way to the top in the deadly competition to honor the legacy of his sensei.
Bloodsport, even though it is approaching 40 years old its still a watchable movie, though I think that its starting to become the type of movie that probably shouldn’t towards the end of a night of movies and beer with because its age would cause it to venture further into ‘is this an action movie or a comedy movie?’ territory. Bloodsport already ventures very close to the territory of a movie that can be mocked considering that Bloodsport was inspired by the ‘true events in the life of Frank W. Dux’. The claims by Dux surrounding the events of Bloodsport have been largely discredited, including co-screenwriter Sheldon Lettich. Even being a watchable movie, Bloodsport comes off as being a rather slow paced movie by modern standards. With Hollywood’s infuriating practice of remaking movies from the 80s I believe that Bloodsport could actually benefit from the treatment of being transformed into faster and darker movie. Especially, if you believe that people’s attention spans can be measured in nanoseconds. One of the more questionable and possibly goofy moments in the movie in the hotel bar in Hong Kong and the Kumite is a hot topic of conversation seemingly throughout the bar. Now, granted the filmmakers had to establish who knew about the Kumite, but I have to ask isn’t the first rule of secret underground full-contact martial arts tournaments, secrecy? I might not be a hipster, but secret underground full-contact martial arts tournaments lose their allure once they have get a mainstream streaming deal.
As great an actor Forest Whitaker has become (at the the time Bloodsport was Whitaker’s 8th movie role) his role as Agent Rawlins alongside Norman Burton as Agent Helmer played no overall impact on the movie. The filmmakers would have better served the movie if they expanded on Leah Ayres role as Janice.