Coffy

You aren't going to find the words "smart" and "blaxploitation" in the same sentence too often.  There's a good reason for this.  Blaxploitation films were made quickly and cheaply, with little time spent on the writing, directing, or editing of the films.  Coffy is actually one of the better blaxploitation films, but it obviously suffers from a low budget and terrible script.  Many blaxploitation staples are present here, so pull out your scorecard and check 'em off...

• Black drug dealers/pimps
• The white man trying to keep the black man down
• Gratuitous nudity
• Funk beats and waka-chicka guitars
• Soundtrack songs that explain the plot
• Racist white villains

Yep, all present and accounted for!  Of course, with all those qualities present in the movie, it can't be that bad, can it?

Coffy (Pam Grier) is a nurse whose young sister got hooked on drugs (heroin, I think) and is now mostly comatose.  Coffy handles the situation the best she can; she pretends to be a junkie willing to exchange sex for drugs and shoots her sister's dealer in the face with a shotgun.  All's well that ends well, right?  Actually, the movie keeps going for another eighty minutes because Coffy keeps finding new bad guys to kill.  To track down the baddies, Coffy does the most sensible thing she can do: she poses as a high class Jamaican prostitute, just to get time alone with the men she holds responsible for the local drug trade.  That doesn't always work well; she spends almost a third of the movie in captivity after she fails to kill a white kingpin.  Overall, though, her strategy works pretty well.

This isn't a movie that would translate well into a book.  Writer/director Jack Hill's script was pretty bad at the time and hasn't aged well in the last 30+ years.  Luckily, a lot of its jive talk has gone from cool to lame and is now in the humorously quaint category, so it's actually kind of fun to hear nowadays.  To give you an example of some of the quality writing here, ask yourself what you would do to disguise yourself as a Jamaican prostitute.  Was your answer "Just add 'mon' to the end of all my sentences"?  If it was, you missed your calling writing blaxploitation screenplays.

The movie obviously has a low budget, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  While Coffy's weapon of choice is a shotgun, you see precious little blood, even when she shoots a man in a swimming pool.  And the guys she shoots in the crotch...well, it's probably better that they didn't have the money to show that.  I actually think Coffy does a good job with the action, despite the low budget.  While seeing some fake blood would have made the movie a little better, it wouldn't have made a huge difference overall; the key was Coffy having a kick-ass attitude, which Grier definitely delivers.

I have a few unanswered questions after viewing this film.  Sid Haig's character is an enforcer for a drug kingpin.  He is supposed to take Coffy out somewhere, give her an overdose, and leave her to die.  Instead, he injects her with the drugs (actually, it's sugar that Coffy swapped for the drugs.  Shh!!!  Don't tell Sid!) and then tries to have consensual sex with her.  That's right.  He's preparing to have sex with a woman that might die during the act.  Eww.  I mean, classy.

And what's with the bad guy that is wearing glasses, but one of the lenses is blackened out?  I'm not stupid, I get that the dude is missing an eye, but he's missing out on an amazing opportunity that totally would have been boss in the 1970s.  He should have worn a monocle and an eye patch.  I swear, I'm not a Hollywood stylist, but sometimes I get inspiration.

Look, the movie's not very good.  The dialogue is terrible, the acting is amateurish and the direction is nonexistent.  And yet, the first half of the movie is pretty entertaining.  Pam Grier is a sassy woman and there is a lot of violence and a lot of gratuitous nudity.  Sure, the movie gets boring for the 30 or 40 minutes where it delivers all of its exposition, but that's a relatively small price to pay.  The awesomeness of Pam Grier more or less cancels out the awfulness of the rest of the movie.

Shutter Island

It's difficult to write about a thriller or mystery movie because nobody wants to be That Guy who reveals that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's Keyser Soze.  This presents me with a challenge: to ramble on at length without being That Guy.  I think I can manage that, but this is a mystery movie, so it has a twist.  That's as much of a spoiler as I'm going to give you.

Adapted from Dennis Lehane's best-selling book of the same name, Shutter Island has more than a few similarities to Lehane's Mystic River.  Boy, that Lehane has a tough life; a best-selling author who gets his books optioned into movies that are directed by some of the most talented directors in the world.  You would think he'd write happier tales.  Anyway, both Mystic River and Shutter Island are mysteries that rely heavily on their characters' secrets to reach their logical conclusion.

Here, we have Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshall that volunteered for a case that would give him an excuse to poke around Shutter Island, a maximum security mental hospital for the criminally insane.  On the ferry ride to the island, Daniels meets his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), and they enter the facility together.  They are ostensibly there to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient --- not a prisoner! --- that managed to escape the facility, despite a locked door, barred windows, no shoes, rugged terrain, and several guards stationed throughout the building.  That doesn't sound like an inside job at all, does it?  Rachel was incarcerated for drowning her three children.  The real reason for Daniels' visit is to learn the fate of Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas), the pyromaniac that burned down Daniels' home with his wife (Michelle Williams) inside.  Laeddis was assigned to the facility after going to jail, but his paper trail ended on Shutter Island...but no one admits to knowing him.  Once inside the facility, Daniels and Chuck meet Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), a practitioner of humane treatment for the mentally ill, and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), a member of the old-school of psychiatric treatment that prefers lobotomy over patience.

From the start of the investigation, nothing goes Daniels' way.  The facility guards refuse him entrance while armed, so he has to give up his gun.  He asks for files that are clearly commonsense ways for him to get the essential information he needs, but he is blocked by the facility's bureaucracy at every turn.  He lost his cigarettes before the boat arrived at the island, and is forced to bum smokes from his new partner.  Orderlies and nurses are sarcastic and generally less than helpful.  The patients he interviews appear coached and seem afraid when he questions them about Andrew Laeddis.  When he faces the truth that the doctors are refusing to aid his case, Daniels can't even leave the island because a hurricane is on its way.  With nothing else to do, Daniels continues his investigation.  Clearly, there is some secret that is being covered up, and he is determined to discover that truth.  He eventually meets with an old informant (Jackie Earle Haley) that is now confined in the most violent ward of the facility, who seems to confirm Daniels' greatest fear; Daniels can uncover the truth behind the island and blow the lid off the whole conspiracy, or he can find out what happened to Andrew Laeddis.  He cannot do both.  The question is what is more important to Daniels: uncovering a terrible truth for the world to see, or finding (killing?) the man responsible for the death of his wife?

Martin Scorsese's direction really stands out in this film, particularly because of Daniels' dreams.  Daniels is suffering from a string of nightmares, hallucinations and waking dreams that are reminding him of his late wife and the Dachau concentration camp that he helped liberate in World War II.  In the dream world, identities are transposed, but the emotions are not.  Memories are shown, but they are spliced with his own subconscious.  At times, the imagery is a little trippy, like when his cigarette briefly smokes in reverse.  Other times, it is sad, as when his wife becomes ash in his arms while he professes his love for her.  And yet other times are the stuff of nightmares, with Holocaust children accusing him of not doing enough to save them.  Scorsese is given free reign to use a lot of symbolism in these scenes, and he throws a lot at the viewer.  In a lot of Scorsese films, he makes good use of camera angles and general cinematography to imply moods or hint at his characters' frame of mind.  He does that in Shutter Island, as well, but he has a lot more freedom to get creative, thanks to the dream scenes.

As far as acting goes, it is all pretty much above board.  Leonardo DiCaprio is consistently good, and working so frequently with Scorsese seems to have taught him the value of subtlety and nuance.  I'm not saying that he was ever an over-actor, but there are a lot of little things he does with his character that I appreciate, from the hunched shoulders and bold stance to the frequent (but not horribly obvious) reminders of his character's tendency for migraine headaches.  DiCaprio carries this movie on his own, but there are a lot of good supporting cast members that briefly pop up.  Mark Ruffalo does a pretty good job as the junior partner and his compassion shows through consistently.  Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow both play their parts well, but what else would you expect from two respected actors?  Ted Levine has a very brief, but frightening, cameo as the facility warden.  Jackie Earle Haley appears to be having a career renaissance playing disturbed characters, and that pleasant trend continues here with some of the more curious wound makeup I have seen in a while.  Michelle Williams was impressive in her small supporting role and was used effectively.  The rest of the cast (including Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, and John Carroll Lynch) is good too, but perhaps not as attention-grabbing.

Even with good direction and good acting, a mystery movie can still be underwhelming if the mystery is no good.  I really liked the story in Shutter Island, even though I was not particularly surprised by the ending.  Normally, if I guess the ending to a mystery correctly, it bothers me a bit.  Here, though, Scorsese drops a lot of hints that flesh out the story and the characters.  While one side effect of those choices was a less than surprising answer to the mystery, it was also satisfying because the twist made sense.  You still might not guess the ending correctly (or, at least, not entirely correctly), but you won't feel as if the end came out of left field.  Since the movie spent so much time on Daniels' subconscious mind, the mystery really takes a back seat to that as the primary plot propeller.  As such, the surprise-worthiness of the ending turned out to be a lot less important than I thought it would be.

This is the sort of film that college students love to write about.  It has excellent direction with a lot of stylistic choices and meaningful symbolism and imagery.  After the movie, you can revisit scenes in your head (or just re-watch the scenes on your DVD) and pick out important details that you missed the first time through.  This is a movie that I expect to be better the second time I watch it because being fully informed of the story will allow me to understand many of the scenes from a different angle next time.  While I completely understand anyone who enjoyed the movie less because the mystery's answer was a little predictable, I thoroughly enjoyed the story, acting and the film as a whole the first time through, and look forward to a repeat viewing.  I may be a little artsy fartsy with movies sometimes, but I appreciate good craftsmanship when I see it.

Rescue Dawn

Rescue Dawn is the film that is loosely based on Dieter Dengler's experiences as a prisoner of war in Laos in 1966.  Dengler published a book back in 1983, Escape From Laos, that probably tells basically the same story, but this film is primarily inspired by the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly.  Werner Herzog directed both Rescue Dawn and Little Dieter... and found Dengler's story so compelling that he found two very different ways to tell it.

The plot is a simple one.  Dengler (Christian Bale) is an American pilot in the mid-1960s that has a bombing mission over Laos.  He gets shot down, which was especially bad in Laos because the US wasn't supposed to be there at all; that essentially means that the US government would not be using diplomacy to get the POWs in Laos home, because the US didn't officially have troops there.  Yes, I know...it sucks to be Dieter Dengler (and not just because of the name).  Dengler is captured by men affiliated with Pathet Lao, which is approximately the Laotian version of the Viet Cong in Vietnam.  When he was initially captured, Dengler was given the chance to denounce the United States by signing a pre-written letter in exchange for leniency; Dengler refused to denounce his country and was sent to a prison camp.  The camp is guarded by a relative handful of men (maybe fifteen or so) and there are six POWs, including Dengler.  Dengler instigates an escape plan, but that's really the small picture.  Even if the POWs escape, they have a dense jungle filled with disease, enemies, and precious little nutrition surrounding them on all sides.  How are they supposed to be rescued from there?

For a movie about POWs, this movie spends relatively little time in the prison camp.  A decent-sized chunk of the story takes place there, to be sure, but I would estimate that less than half of the film is set in the camp.  That really puts a lot of the focus on Christian Bale to carry this picture, which he does, often with extended periods with minimal dialogue.  I don't consider Bale an explosive or overwhelmingly great actor; I think he approaches his roles methodically and tries to pay attention to the details.  In this regard, he does a great job.  His mannerisms, from the way he behaves in the jungle at the beginning and end of the film to the way he eats his worms and grubs in the prison camp, feel authentic.  He certainly looks like someone who spent time as a POW; he lost over 50 pounds to play this part.

Bale wasn't the only actor to lose weight for this movie; Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies lost 40 and 33 pounds, respectively.  Both actors turn in good performances here.  Zahn is primarily known as a comedic actor, but he does a good job as the POW that is the least depressed and deluded when Dengler arrives.  As such, he becomes Dengler's partner in crime and shares a lot of screen time with Christian Bale.  Personally, I like Zahn best when he is stretching himself (Happy, Texas and Out of Sight are good examples of Zahn's talent for layered comedic roles), and playing an ordinary man in an extraordinary circumstance is a refreshing change of pace from his typical buddy comedy fare.  Davies has a lot of fun playing the delusional member of the group, insisting that diplomacy was the only way back to the US and he would rather ruin an escape attempt than risk his diplomatic rescue.  Davies' character is interesting because it gives an unexpected source of conflict that produces some unusual results.  The rest of the supporting cast is solid, but not particularly noteworthy.  The Pathet Lao appeared to be mostly evil, which may be an oversimplification, but was probably a valid point of view coming from a POW.

Despite the lengthy periods with limited dialogue, Herzog does a good job keeping the suspense and danger in place.  This could be a film that tries to convey the exhaustion that Dengler experienced, but Herzog wisely chose to compress time and focus on immediate threats whenever possible.  The cinematography is good and there are no truly weird moments, which makes this the most viewer-friendly film Herzog has directed to date.  There has been some dispute over how true this "true story" is; the family of Davies' character has set up a website that attacks the film's accuracy in general and the portrayal of Jeremy Davies' character in particular.  While I have no doubt that Herzog changed some aspects of the story to make a more suitable narrative, I find myself pretty indifferent to complaints of inaccuracy.  Herzog claims the sole writing credit for the movie (despite the fact that Dengler wrote his own book about his experiences), which tells me right away that he chose to change some plot elements for dramatic purposes.  As long as Dengler didn't get a writing credit and the movie is not promoted as a biopic, that's okay by me.  My main problem with the film has to do with the plot; by spending so much time out of the prison camp, the immediacy of the escape is diluted.  That is a necessary problem, given the story, but the escape wasn't as cathartic as it should have been.

This is a move that is difficult to break down into individual components because it really is a cumulative effect.  The ways that each character reacts to their stressors might be unexpected at times, but it is logical, which is difficult for a director to pull off.  The physical work the actors put into their roles combines with an unusually restrained directorial effort from Herzog to make the best POW war movie since The Bridge Over the River Kwai.

Mary Reilly

Gothic horror.  The phrase immediately brings to my mind heavy shadows, forbidden longings and the time when morality and science were often completely opposed. If you give me a few more seconds to think about it, though, I might imagine fat kids with dyed black hair, eyeliner, stocking sleeves and combat boots that make me wish that I didn't like the Cure.

Those seemingly disparate ideas are not as separate as I might want to believe.  For every good Gothic horror story (Dracula, Frankenstein, From Hell - the comic), there is a crappy bastardization on film (Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, From Hell - the movie).  All play with the same basic set of tools (science vs. superstition, dark vs. light, love vs. seduction), but the Hollywood versions in the 1990s consistently missed the mark.  Mary Reilly is a novel that offers an different point of view on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  It doesn't try to change much of the story, but offers some alternate motivations for the Jekyll/Hyde character.

The movie Mary Reilly attempts to do the same by shifting the narrative focus onto the shoulders of the title character.  Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) is one of many servants in the Jekyll household.   I'm going to assume that anyone vaguely interested in this movie has a passing familiarity with Jekyll and Hyde, as an idea if not as literature, because the movie makes this assumption as well.  But, just to clarify, Dr. Jekyll is a middle-aged (maybe a little older) scientist that is brilliant and kind; unfortunately, he represses his emotions (which was the style at the time) and begins to long for a way to release them.  He creates a drug that transforms him into Mr. Hyde, a younger, more virile persona that is essentially Jekyll's Id unleashed.  Hyde's appearance varies from version to version, but he is always the lusty, violent side of Jekyll.  So, while that story is playing out in the background, Mary Reilly does her household chores, encountering Jekyll and Hyde from time to time.  She spends most of her time carrying food trays and gathering laundry.  Oh, the suspense exclamation mark three times.

Mary draws the attention of Dr. Jekyll (John Malkovich) when he notices some scars on Mary that are clearly from animal bites.  Initially too shy or socially reserved to tell her story, Mary later relates how her abusive father (Michael Gambon) once locked her in a closet with rats, which bit her many times.  When Jekyll asks if she hates her father for what he did, Mary refuses to hate; she reasoned that alcohol made him into a monster, one that acted, spoke, and even walked differently than her sober father.  This really hits home for Jekyll.  I think.  The camera holds a few extra beats of Jekyll staring with his mouth slightly open at this point, but Malkovich doesn't really emote much here.  Mr. Hyde (still Malkovich) also pays Mary special attention.  He enjoys flirting with her and making her uncomfortable.  He is rude and arrogant around her.  Presumably, this is because Jekyll is attracted to Mary, but cannot express himself properly.  Eventually, Hyde appears more and more, until he murders an important man in broad daylight in the streets of London for no reason.  And that's the movie.

I really want to point out this movie's flaws, but I'm going to start out positive.  John Malkovich is a good actor who can play an emotionally reserved man as easily as he can a jerk.  I thought the differentiation between the Jekyll and Hyde characters (vocal tones, facial expressions) was pretty decent.  I'm glad that at least one character (but sadly, only one character) pointed out the visual similarities between Jekyll and Hyde --- and yes, that is a poodle-haired Michael Sheen making that comment.  I liked Jekyll's laboratory, although it was unnecessarily weird; I get having the operating room be an auditorium, but there is no reason for the walkway into the lab to have been a suspended chain bridge.  That's just not practical.  As far as the acting goes, Michael Gambon did a decent job of being a disgusting, abusive drunk.  I thought Glenn Close's performance was muy macho, and it was brave of her to play a Victorian brothel-owning transvestite.  Oh, wait... she was supposed to be a woman?  With that accent?  And that Jay Leno chin?  That can't be right...

...And that's the best this movie has to offer.  Why is that, you ask?  Well, for starters, Julia Roberts was cast in the lead role.  I have nothing against Roberts, although I will admit that she does not usually star in movies that I desperately want to see.  This role goes against her strengths, though.  Julia Roberts is at her best when she is smiling and charming audiences.  Here, her performance reminds me of something I heard in The Goonies cast/director commentary; apparently,director Richard Donner's most common directorial instruction to his cast of child actors was "big eyes."  Julia Roberts channels that direction in this movie like no other.  She spends most of the movie looking like a Precious Moments doll, particularly one commemorating the moment when a child watched its dog get hit by a train.  I kept wanting to staple her lower lip to her face so she wouldn't keep tripping over than damn thing.  I get that working for Jekyll and Hyde doesn't make for slapstick comedy, but even servants have more than one emotion.  And that is just her character's normal state!  Eventually, she has a nightmare where Hyde begins to rape her, but when she wakes up screaming, her roommate tells Mary that the dream didn't sound bad to her.  That implies that Mary had a Hyde rape fantasy.  Finally, a movie that has the guts to stand up for rape.  Three cheers for rape!  In a related note, no matter how hard I scrub, I don't feel clean.

John Malkovich is not at his best here, either.  For a movie that is very British and very Victorian England, John's accent has attendance problems, to put it mildly.  I also find it hard to believe that anyone could  look at Malkovich's Jekyll and Hyde and not immediately conclude that they are the same person, or, at the very least, siblings.  Hyde has longer hair and no beard.  Aside from that, he still looks and speaks like Jekyll.  And I don't care what time period it is, John Malkovich is not someone that inspires dark, erotic dreams (I typed those words, but the only thing that made me feel better when I read it back was scraping my tongue).  I also didn't care for the way Hyde's crimes were handled.  In the original story, only the final murder is clearly a crime; the rest of Hyde's activities might have ranged from fairly innocent fare, such as staying out late in the city, drinking to excess, and sleeping with women of questionable morals to the more grisly stuff, like violence and murder.  Here, it is primarily a blood lust, which cheapens the character in my mind.  Also, the first evidence of violence shows Hyde's bedroom covered in blood, with only an animal's carcass (possibly a rat's) to imply that the blood is not human; the effect, however, is for the scene to resemble an act of beastiality gone horribly wrong (not that I'm judging).  Hyde then goes on to decapitate someone off camera and murders a man with a cane handle.  While not particularly fun to watch, there is little or no suspense, horror, or Gothic-ness in any of these scenes.  In fact, they come off as little more than disagreeable.

The biggest problem with this movie (aside from the two actors and their characters) is the subtlety of the film.  I rarely accuse any movie of being too subtle, but this movie never comes out and says anything.  I assume that Jekyll and Hyde have an emotional or sexual attraction for Mary Reilly, but I just don't know for sure.  This movie stays true to the Victorian way of not letting emotions show, but that really cramps a film's style when those same emotions are implied to be the motivating factors for the climax of the film.

The film was directed by Stephen Frears, a man that is capable of greatness (High Fidelity, anyone?).  Surely, his direction can be seen in Roberts' performance and the overall feel of the movie.  It is rare that I say this about a director that has talent, but either he missed every mark he set for this film, or he didn't aim for the right things.  This was painful to watch.  It wasn't until I was finished watching the movie that I realized that the movie's tag line ("Evil loves innocence") didn't refer to Jekyll/Hyde and Mary, but to the film and its audience.

Kickboxer

 The cover to this movie's DVD has the tag line "If your opponent refuses to be humbled...destroy him."  I don't think that actually has anything to do with this movie.  At all.  Isn't that just implying that the villain refuses to bow down to Van Damme's superiority (or the other way around), and must be killed for not tapping out?  Well, whatever; that tag line is the least of this movie's problems.

Let's get the plot framework out of the way first.  Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Kurt Sloane, who is the little brother to the US kickboxing champion, Eric Sloane (Dennis Alexio), and sits in his brother's corner during matches.  Eric decides that he should become world champion in kickboxing and goes to Bangkok to fight the Thailand champion, the undefeated Tong Po (Micel Qissi).  Eric is clearly out of his depth in Bangkok and Tong Po beats him mercilessly; after Eric is obviously defeated, Tong Po breaks his back for fun.  Clearly, this movie is going to be about Kurt nursing his brother to health in the hospitals of Bangkok, showing him the value of inner strength in a city that is alien to them both.  Hold on...what's this?  Kurt bucks the obvious Oscar-baiting plot and decides to train himself in kickboxing to avenge his brother?  I did not see that coming.  Kurt meets an American (Haskell V. Anderson III), who introduces him to a martial arts master (Dennis Chan), who trains Kurt to be a kickboxing bad-ass, but will Bangkok allow him to fight Tong Po?

This movie suffers from the same thing that a lot of martial arts movies do: training scenes. Dear Hollywood, I don't give a crap about movie characters training to be tough if the actors can obviously deliver roundhouse kicks to the face from day one.  If you cast Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a karate role, then sure, I want to see how he ramps up his skills.  Jean-Claude Van Damme, though?  Come on!  They even spend time pretending that he can't do the splits.  I'm sorry, but I've seen several Van Damme movies and the young Van Damme proudly shows off his splits in every film.  At least introduce something new to his repertoire.  Is a death punch too much to ask?  Maybe a move that rips the skin off someone's face?  But no, we have to pretend that Van Damme is waaay out of his depth here, but through the power of the movie montage, he will quickly become world class.

This is one of the early acting attempts for Van Damme.  Now, I have no problem with Van Damme's kinda-sorta karate, but his acting has always left something to be desired.  No matter how successful his films were, I just can never get past his voice (click the "Singing Chinese" link in the bottom right for a great example).  That is pro-bab-ally unfair of me to pick on his accent, but that's life.  The weird thing is that Dennis Alexio is actually a worse actor than Van Damme.  To be fair to Alexio, he was actually a champion kickboxer, and not a professional actor.  So...what's Van Damme's excuse?  Haskell V. Anderson III's performance is on par with Van Damme's;you can tell that he memorized his lines, at least, but that's about where my compliments stop for him.  The rest of the primary cast actually isn't half bad, but that may be because they treat Van Damme like a moron.  Both Dennis Chan and Micel Qissi turn in solid performances as a wise Asian dude and a meanie pants, respectively.

There are two directors listed for the movie (David Worth and Mark DiSalle, who shares a story credit for the film with Van Damme), presumably one for the action and one for the drama.  I might be wrong, though.  Perhaps this example of true cinema required the efforts of two full-time directors to get all the subtext and symbolism they could squeeze into this 97 minute slice of pure movie gold.  Or, maybe they decided who would direct what by rock-paper-scissors.  Whatever works, right?

Not everything in this movie is bad.  It gives us the semi-iconic image of Van Damme dipping his fists in wax (or something) and then dipping them in broken glass for the final fight.  The final fight is okay, I guess, following in the Rocky school of fighting (get beat up until you decide to win).  More importantly, though, this film gives us Van Damme dancing:

I know what you're thinking and, yes, he is wearing a break-away tank top with suspender clips built in.

I try to judge movies based on their individual merits and how well they accomplished their goals.  This movie is clearly all about the fight scenes, with some boring story in between.  Unfortunately, the fighting isn't all that great, aside from the awesomeness with Van Damncing.  I'm no professional fighter, but I'm pretty sure that the fighting in this movie is not muay thai, as they mention so often.  It looks to me like it is traditional kickboxing with a teenie bit of muay thai added for spice.  To give you an idea of how hard they tried to make this movie good, Tong Po is credited as "himself" in the credits, even though he was just the character name for Micel Qissi in this movie; they couldn't even tell if their characters were real people or not!  I'm sure Van Damme walked around the set saying "I just learned karate...wanna see?" all day long.  I guess they got confused because they are all method actors and the story was so enveloping.  And unpredictable!  Do you think Van Damme will get to fight Tong Po by the end of the film?  I don't want to spoil the ending for you, so you'll just have to watch and see for yourself.  At least Van Damme showed enough sense to not star in any of the four (FOUR!) sequels.