Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time.
Cultural infamy: Long ago, when the world was new, Belgian karate black belt Jean-Claude Van Damme was more famous for his over-the-top, high-kicking action movies than he was for being a washed-up eccentric spouting impenetrable wisdom McNuggets a la Franglais. In 1989, he was able to parlay his ability to do the splits into a career as a marquee leading man, and starred in an entertainingly ludicrous beat-’em-up called Kickboxer. So bright was his star that he thought himself too good to appear in the movie’s inevitable sequel, opting instead to act opposite the celebrated thespian Jean-Claude Van Damme in the kickboxing twins epic Double Impact. This left the filmmakers—or, rather, an entirely different set of filmmakers who somehow got hold of the rights to the Kickboxer franchise—to find someone else to step into his gusseted trunks. Enter… Sasha Mitchell.
The lunkheaded former soap opera star, previously known as the bastard son of J.R. Ewing on Dallas, took over the leading role and began an epic journey of on-screen foot-flailing that would spawn a mini-dynasty of kickboxing movies. As a cinematic genre, le nouvelle vague du kickbox proved surprisingly reliable at the box office, but the movies tended to be pretty awful, to the degree that people started making fun of them roughly five seconds after they hit the screen—they were a favorite satirical target of the late, lamented Spy magazine—and continue to be the butt of jokes today: A running gag on the NBC sitcom Community involves Troy and Abed’s love-hate relationship with a movie franchise called Kickpuncher.
Curiosity factor: For reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, the original Kickboxer made a pile of money, ensuring a sequel. The fact that no one involved in the production of the first movie had anything to do with the second wouldn’t have been such a big deal if JCVD had agreed to reprise his role as former cornerman/vengeance-crazed kickboxer Kurt Sloan; unfortunately, he too turned up his nose at the follow-up, forcing the producers to re-staff. They settled on Mitchell, who pulled off the dubious dual achievement of being both a worse kickboxer and a worse actor than Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Still, when you get down to cases, one high-kicking meatloaf is the same as another. What’s more intriguing is some of the other talent marshaled to bring Kickboxer 2 to life. Brian Austin Green, star of the original Beverly Hills 90210 and the sixth-worst white rapper of the ’90s, has a cameo appearance. Also appearing: dignified and talented character actor Peter Boyle. Who came out of the experience worse for wear is an enigma for the ages. Kickboxer 2’s dismal screenplay was written by David S. Goyer, who, long before he became the respected scribe of The Dark Knight and co-creator of FlashForward, specialized in movies like Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys. (Goyer apparently had enough faith in the potential of Kickboxer 2 to sink his own money into it; he’s one of the film’s two producers.) Best of all, it was directed by none other than the anti-legendary Albert Pyun, a Hollywood ultra-hack best described as Uwe Boll with less ego and about the same amount of talent. Pyun would also eventually direct Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor, thus cementing his reputation as the go-to filmmaker for really bad movies with the word “kickboxer” in the title.
The viewing experience: Kickboxer 2: The Road Back opens up with Sasha Mitchell, as David Sloan, wandering around his gymnasium, which is filled with trophies, newspaper articles, and photos of his two brothers, Kurt and Eric. They were the main characters of the first movie, but here they’ve been relegated to Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film status, aside from a brief cameo for crippled brother Eric, now played by a completely different actor. A song called “My Brother’s Eyes” blares on the soundtrack. It sounds like a horrible amalgam of Creed and Survivor, but it’s really by someone named Eric Barnett, whose only other claim to fame was being the guitarist for Iron Butterfly in the late ’90s.
After pledging to a bunch of badly rendered murals of his brothers that he’s trying, he runs into a couple of neighborhood urchins (one played by Green), who challenge him to do “that thing you do with your eyes closed.” For a second, it seems like the movie is going to head in a very different direction, but it turns out they mean dodging blows with a blindfold on. Mitchell punks an overheated Green, and then drops a nuclear wisdom-bomb on him:
He repeats his Bruce-Lee-via-discount-zoot-weed wisdom for a bunch of other colorful street kids in his gym before we get our first drearily unsatisfying kickboxing match. So, for a minute, it looks like Kickboxer 2 is going to develop into an even honkier version of The Karate Kid. But then, accompanied by someone who appears to be the bass player for Dark Tranquility, comes a slumming Peter Boyle as “sports visionary” Justin Maciah. He’s starting a new kickboxing league, and he wants Mitchell, as the last of the Sloan dynasty, to be part of it. (The bass player for Dark Tranquility—actually, Matthias Hues as champion kickboxer Neil Vargas—isn’t so sure, and calls his leg sweep a “bullshit woman’s move.”) Although Boyle claims that “people have been waiting their whole lives” for a professional kickboxing federation, Mitchell, who thinks of himself as a teacher, gives him the brush-off using his standard delivery, consisting of marginally profound Eastern wisdom delivered in a stoner drawl. It’s hard to watch any of Mitchell’s scenes without being reminded of James Franco’s Daniel Desario, from Freaks And Geeks, playing Carlos the Dwarf.
Still, all these heavy bags, trophy cases, and places to stand while you pontificate don’t pay for themselves, and soon enough, Mitchell’s manager is telling him that if he doesn’t make money fast, he’ll lose the gym. Since he’s too macho to teach aerobics and too sissy to stop giving free lessons to adorably foul-mouthed local brats, his only choice is to get back into competition. While his protégé, the hotheaded but talented Vince Murdocco, champs at the bit to get his own shot at the big time, Mitchell agrees to take on Hues in a match at the L.A. Forum, with Boyle greasing the wheels with a big paycheck.