CineTV Contest #68 - Favorite Movie Between Friends: Bloodsport.
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There are films that exude violence, physical strength, the characters are insolent when speaking or acting and sacrifice themselves to protect others, it is a macho cinema.
In the 80's an infinity of films with the characteristics described above were presented, being the undisputed kings, (at least for me), Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and Charles Bronson.
It was 1988, and Die Hard was not yet released, so Bruce Willis was not known as an action hero.
In addition to these types of macho movies my friends and I would get together to watch a generous number of Martial Arts films, our favorites being all the films starring Bruce Lee, (especially Enter the Dragon), and Jimmy Wang Yu films such as Chinese Boxer (credited as the first to start the unarmed kung fu film genre) and One-Armed Swordsman. Another film we greatly admired was Five Fingers of Death.
My friends and I enjoyed every punch, every kick, every tournament we saw in these films, every display of testosterone.
In early 1988 one of the friends with whom I enjoyed this kind of movies invited me to see a film by a Belgian martial artist named Jean-Claude Van Damme whom we had already seen as the antagonist in the movie No Retreat, No Surrender. The title of the film was Bloodsport.
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Really, he was the best thing about this film.
Moving on, we went to a movie theater where there were chairs on the patio and in the balcony. It was a popular Monday and the theater was almost full. The cotufas almost always ended up on your back if you sat on the patio, and many times you also took home chewing gum in your hair, all courtesy of the balcony audience. To avoid this we bought tickets in the last row of the balcony.
The plot of the film revolves around the participation of a U.S. Army soldier/fighter (Frank Dux) in an illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong called Kumite. Here, the participants are the best fighters in the world, and face each other for life or death every 5 years.
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In the 80's it was very common the presence of the master who teaches the protagonist how to fight. This movie is no exception, but the teaching turned out to be very brutal, and I doubt that Daniel-San (The Karate Kid), would have endured it.
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Between laughter and applause in the movie theater there was a festive atmosphere, my friend and I brought a covered pizza which we gobbled with a soda frantically watching this kind of sadistic training, but very effective given what we will see in the remainder of the film.
Jean-Claude Van Damme's famous split is something almost hypnotic, which he manages to do naturally, and which has made him one of the great exponents of martial arts in cinema.
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Every time the protagonist did this it was inevitable to see on our faces the sensation of pain.
Already in the tournament the referees ask the character of Dux to prove that he is the authentic representative of the Tanaka clan, (which they doubt because of his western features), proving that he knows the technique of Dim Mack.
In a way my friend and I knew this technique also called the touch of death in Chinese martial arts, is ancient and is related to the passage of energy known as CHI, through the meridians of the body. We saw something similar in the movie Five Fingers of Death. Attacking someone with this technique can result in broken bones, paralysis, muscle spasms and even death.
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In the first Dim Mack demonstration, Dux must break a brick from a row of five bricks placed one on top of the other. Dux concentrates and hits the brick at the top of the row, displacing the entire row of bricks and transmitting all the force to the brick at the bottom, destroying them.
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To our mind came another reminiscence of martial arts cinema, as was Operation Dragon, here the villain, is called Chong-Li (Bolo Yeung), and in Operation Dragon also suffered the kicks and punches of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, in the aforementioned film.
When Dux performs the Dim-Mak and breaks the last brick, to which Li replies: "Very good but brick not hit back".
In Enter the dragon , Bruce Lee comments to O`Hara after his exhibition: "A board does not hit back".
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On the second day of fights, Frank Dux faces Pumola (actor David Ho), a sumo-style wrestler. Pumola blocks Dux and tries to break his spine; but Dux manages to get free, and applies a Dim Mak point to Pumola's belly. At that moment, Pumola tries to pull himself together and grabs Frank Dux again, who manages to hit him while performing a Split.
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We were all delirious at the cinema at that helicopter kick and especially in the final fight in which the martial artist, Chinese national, Bolo Yeung, participates as the defending champion in the Kumite tournament, is a challenging and endearing character for the protagonist.
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When the protagonist won the tournament almost the entire audience in the movie theater stood up and applauded. The final titles arrived and the carpet of the movie theater, both in the courtyard and in the box, was full of popcorn, candy wrappers and glasses of soft drinks. It was not a very hygienic environment.
I must say that Jean-Claude Van Damme played his first leading role with an overwhelming charisma that won over the audience immediately. His fight scenes look leisurely, giving a sense of spectacularity every time he intervened. A highly recommended film that no martial arts fan should miss.
It is one of my favorite movies and also my friend's, it is about Martial Arts, and in this case mixed, we saw the birth of a new action hero: Jean-Claude Van Damme, and we could notice several references to films we had already seen. Imagine paying 0.34 cents on the dollar to see a film that even today has many fans and is considered a cult film in its genre.
Not that it would win an Oscar, but it is much more remembered than some films that did 35 years after its release.
It is also memorable for us because that theater was demolished a week after the premiere of this film, and even today no building has been built on that site.
The film was a box office success and one of the best that the Cannon production company could make, its director was Newt Arnold. It grossed $ 50,000,000 worldwide and its cost was $ 1,100,000. I forgot, Forest Whitaker appears in a very minor role.