Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994)

Simply Perfect

Best movie of this year hands down!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The reason why I watch Kickboxer 2-4 is because of Sasha Mitchell. I think hes talented and pretty good, he made step by step worthwhile. Too bad hes been in films that are not that big for exposure. But Kickboxer 2 was really good and 3 was OK.4 is OK. But seems like there storyline has holes or doesn't fill in well enough. Like it could use more details on how he went to jail and maybe a wedding scene showing he got married. The fight scenes could use some work, but nonetheless I its worth to watch. I like David Sloan Duke Nuke'm persona. Careful for some young ones, there's full frontal nudity and sex scenes.

If you're a student of film-making (which I am not), then I'm sure you'd be appalled at the technical holes you could poke through in the acting, lighting, production, etc. However, the whole point of a fight flick is the fighting. The plot exists only as a device to convince the audience of the fighters' motivation to fight, and to that end it works.As for the fighting, it's really quite good. Unlike the first Kickboxer, the main protagonist actually uses some pretty good Muay Thai to go along with his flashy spinning kicks. He even uses the engaging question at one point, a street fighting classic. The fight choreography is fairly realistic, unlike much of the first Kickboxer which was too "tennis match-y" for my liking (ie: you throw your techniques and I stand there covering until you finish, then we reciprocate). There's even a couple of Machado brothers (Rigan and John), which will please the grapplers. There's even a Frank Zappa lookalike (which I see someone already noticed).One thing that disappoints me a little is Tong Po. Kamel Krifia does about as well as one could expect, I guess, but he isn't half as menacing as Michel Qissi. Some creative camera angles to make him look bigger, less verbal dialogue and more body language - culminating in a single, memorial line somewhere at a critical point of the movie - would have been better.Still, overall, if you're looking for some martial arts cheese with good fight action, this is very much worth a look.

Firstly, I'll start with what the film actually does right. Some of the fight choreography isn't bad and the editing is better than usual for Albert Pyun, the New Mexico locations look nice and the overall production values are much better than usual for Albert Pyun as the picture is clear and colourful, there are a couple of basic stunts (not well used however) and Sasha Mitchell does the best he could possibly do given the material surrounding him.Now for the rest, it was full of so many things which simply made say "Huh?" or had me in hysterics that I don't know where to start. The villain who goes by the name of "Tong Po" in the previous Kickboxer movies wouldn't return in this. For a hack director in a schlocky B-movie, that is no problem. Attempt to use stock footage and then get a double like Ed Wood did with Bela Lugosi for Plan 9? Nope, although Pyun did do that with Snoop Dogg in Urban Menace and The Wrecking Crew, he has gone one step further. This time, he has hired a new actor to take his place and applied ridiculous makeup to make him look like the original actor. The result looks like like somewhere between The Joker from Batman and a Thunderbirds puppet and looks even more funny when he's standing outdoors and his skin is red with sweat, but his face remains a light yellow tone. If you are familiar with Pyun, he often uses close-ups of the actors faces in his movies, often so two characters who are not on set at the time can be edited together to look like they're in conversation. He continues that trend in this, and the "Tong Po" character is seen in close-ups several times, revealing how truly bad the makeup is and making me laugh harder than I have at a movie in a long time. Not since I saw Anna Nicole Smith in Skyscraper have I laughed through every single scene one character has been seen in. And when he tries to act scary and threatening, don't get me started. Let's just say he's as scary as a fluffy little bunny rabbit. I really felt sorry for the entire cast who had to act around this character and pretend to be taking him seriously. And what makes it even funnier is that exactly the same weak plot could have been executed with a new villain. There was absolutely no reason why Tong Po had to be part of this plot. Much of what little budget there was seems to have been spent on a pointless and completely ridiculous barroom brawl. Michele "The Mouse" Krasnoo is sitting there minding her own business drinking a can of Coke when a bunch of rednecks come and pick on her. By amazing coincidence, at just the right time Sasha Mitchell comes and saves her. Now my first impressions were "Huh?" when I saw this. Krasnoo was 19 when this was filmed but looks about 15. Now just why was she sitting in a redneck bar to drink a can of coke to begin with? This scene is where Pyun has used what budget he had for stunts it seems but he has no idea how to use them. For example, the biggest stunt is when one of the rednecks gets thrown through a window (which shatters like plastic) and when he stands up about 3 metres away from the bar, a van comes driving up about 20 MPH and launches him through another window back into the building. Now why would a van be moving at that speed while only a few feet away from the building unless the driver was unbelievably careless while parking? It reminded me of the exploding car in U.S Seals which drives into an area where a tank is causing having at about 50 MPH. Truly stupid. And after being saved, Krasnoo's character is extremely obnoxious and unthankful to Mitchell for saving her. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more stupid, it turns out she is also a fighter and is entering Tong Po's tournament. Which now leads me to her performance. Not content with one hilariously bad character in the movie, we now have another one. You will get better line delivery from your average computer voice generating software program. Not only that, but in fight scenes with grown men who are mostly over a foot taller than her, it looks silly and unconvincing. I have no doubt she has skills and definitely has great flexibility, but this film does a very poor job in demonstrating that. Not all the fights are bad however and there are some decent ones, but Pyun ruins any excitement they may have had with bad camera angles and turning the camera towards the spectators or "Tong Po" at awkward moments.Overall, this is awful but I think anybody with the right kind of humour must see it as it's yet another example of film-making at the bottom of the food chain. I will give it that I found it absolutely painless to sit through unlike some of Pyun's other "movies". If you are after an exciting martial arts flick, then stay away. The climatic fight scene is especially funny, where Mitchell and the so called "Tong Po" battle it out on top of tables and after losing the battle, our plastic faced friend runs away leaving it open for another sequel. Yay! It hasn't happened and after the final product of Kickboxer 4 and the fact there's already been a 5 with completely new characters, I can safely say it won't happen. But to think that Pyun thought this was good enough to make another sequel and that his "Tong Po" was convincing enough to return doesn't say a lot for the intelligence of his target audience.

After watching Kickboxer 4, late last night (2am-4am) on FX, my only response is, wow. I thought the movie was fun to watch! The acting was pretty bad, the story was stupid and cliché, the fight scenes were poorly done and I was expecting the main character to all of a sudden say his catch phrase "DUDE!" from Step by Step.What was with almost every character looking like a famous person? I'm really happy to see Frank Zappa was able to act in a film before his untimely death.Also, why did every bad-ass character in that movie end up to be a wimp at the end. Frank Zappa snapped a guys neck, then smashed his head into the ground for fun (in an OR scrub) and beat the crap out of all those people in the beginning (in a bright red polo shirt). But here comes big bad Cody, doesn't even elbow him in the face, "I've had enough!". Same thing with the so called "savage international terrorist". He kicked total butt in the beginning and then at the end he scurrys off like one of those flying monkeys in the Wizard of OZ. I did enjoy the movie though, wouldn't nominate it for a Grammy though. But my liking was mostly due to the fact that I felt like a member of the "Mystery Science 3000" cast, making fun of almost every scene.And what the hell was with that "hiss" Sloan did at the end? Damnit, i need a cigarette.