Bloodsport (1988)
Jean-Claude Van Damme’s breakthrough as an action star, Bloodsport is best described in the actor’s native language as “beaucoup de fromage”. Directed by Newt Arnold and written by Sheldon Lettich, Christopher Cosby and Mel Friedman, the film is ridiculously cheesy, often unintentionally hilarious — and very entertaining.
Marketing for Bloodsport emphasized that it was based on the alleged “true story” of martial artist Frank Dux (Van Damme). In the film, Dux is a U.S. Army captain and practitioner of ninjutsu who goes AWOL to participate in the underground Kumite martial arts tournament in Hong Kong, with federal law enforcement hot on his trail. After Bloodsport was released to much box office success, reports emerged that the real Dux was a compulsive liar who had fabricated his combat record, his Japanese sensei, and even the existence of the Kumite itself. Once you know that, it means the film ends on an awkward note when it displays title cards listing achievements Dux claimed for himself. It’s a safe bet all these claims are false.
In any case, the fact that Dux made up these stories doesn’t really matter in terms of the movie’s effectiveness. Bloodsport is above all an excuse for lots of kickass fight scenes, marked by a plentiful supply of slow-motion yelling and goofy facial expressions. The soundtrack is gloriously ’80s — starting with Frank Hertzog’s terrific score, which has all the decade’s requisite synths and gated-reverb drums along with traditional Chinese instruments. Stan Bush, perhaps best known for his Transformers: The Movie anthem “The Touch”, returns here with two songs, “Fight to Survive” and the ballad “On My Own”. Of the two, “Fight to Survive” is the kind of cheesy, fist-pumping inspirational rocker they just don’t make anymore. The chanted “Kumite, Kumite” hook will immediately burrow itself into your brain.
With a few exceptions, most of the actors — Van Damme included — have been cast more for their physical prowess and martial arts skills than acting ability. The reliance on stars limited in delivering dialogue is one of the reasons ’80s action movies like Bloodsport rely heavily on MTV-style musical montages, which help establish a character’s emotions without requiring much emoting from the leads. Again, none of this is really a problem given that the main focus of the movie is fighting.
Like Schwarzenegger before him, Van Damme is not the strongest actor, but he has charisma. More to the point, he has a physicality that helps make for some impressive fight choreography. His roundhouse kicks during the climax are a highlight. We also see Van Damme perform the splits at least half a dozen times, underscoring that this guy must have the loosest hamstrings in Hollywood.
Among the cast is a young Forest Whitaker as Agent Rawlins. Notable supporting characters include Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb), a fellow American fighter who quickly befriends Dux, and journalist Janice Kent (Leah Ayres), Van Damme’s love interest and for all intents and purposes the only woman in the film. The biggest standout is our main villain Chong Li (Bolo Yeung). Often cast as an antagonist, most notably in Bruce Lee’s magnum opus Enter the Dragon, Yeung is a suitably intimidating figure. While Yeung’s lines are dubbed, his physical presence and demonic facial expressions speak for themselves.
In his seminal study Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie, film scholar Eric Lichtenfeld describes the fight scenes in Bloodsport and how Chong Li set the template for all future Van Damme villains:
In these [fight] sequences, the violence pulls free of any narrative context: it is fighting for the sake of fighting, thinly justified as the characters’ need to “be the best.” The line drawn by the filmmakers between the good characters and the bad is arbitrary. It is clear that Chong Li is evil — while dispatching opponents, his leer is a skull’s leer — but Jackson is just as base, thrilling at the Kumite’s bloodletting. Chong Li’s villainy is almost entirely a function of iconography rather than ideology: there is Chong Li’s maniacal grin, his stance (lumbering towards his opponents like a monster), and his very race, which is a counterpoint to Jackson and Dux’s. Chong Li is thus the prototypical villain for the Van Damme action film. The actor’s subsequent projects, 1989’s Cyborg and Kickboxer, both distributed by Cannon, also define their villains along racial lines. It is a shrewd if repellant strategy. The otherness of the villains augments the us-ness of Van Damme, who, for all his physical prowess, cannot hide his foreign birth and speak at the same time.
Honest Trailers similarly mocked how Chong Li’s villainous nature is based on his excessive glee as he “purposely hurts people in this no-holds-barred hurting-people tournament.” Li also isn’t above outright cheating. He does establish his sadistic nature early on, inflicting as much pain on his opponents as possible and even outright killing them. That Li is able to literally get away with murder on multiple occasions while still being a crowd favourite is implausible, but then so is much of Bloodsport. As fun to watch as the climactic fight is, Van Damme’s opponent leaves him untouched for long stretches and attacks him in nonsensical ways.
Bloodsport doesn’t skimp on the homoeroticism characteristic of the ’80s action genre. The camera lovingly focuses on Van Damme’s muscled, oiled body. In the aftermath of a love scene between Dux and Kent, Van Damme displays more nudity than his leading lady does. Indeed, Dux expresses more affection for his male buddy Jackson than for his female love interest. At the end Dux kisses the burly, bearded Jackson — on the side of the head — and tells him he loves him. He extends neither courtesy to the attractive blonde woman he had bedded earlier in the film.
I can understand after watching Bloodsport why the film has developed a cult following and is considered one of Van Damme’s best action vehicles. This isn’t great art, but it is great entertainment. Much of the appeal is in the movie’s very cheesiness. I laughed at the MTV-style montages, the likes of which have been parodied in movies like Team America: World Police. There are amateurish mistakes: perhaps to establish his heavily accented character as more “American”, a young Dux wears both a San Francisco Giants hat and a New York Giants jersey. Were the filmmakers unaware these were two distinct teams representing different cities and sports?
Still, the fight sequences are great, the soundtrack is awesome, the characters are fun, the Hong Kong locations are beautiful, and Van Damme holds it all together with his natural charm and eye-popping martial arts skills. An enjoyable watch.
7/10
