Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994) Reviews

• Unbelievably funny, hard to believe it wasn't intentional.

  aloep2004-12-27

  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.

• One of my favorites

  LosAngelesLegend2006-10-11

  I like this movie as cheesy as people may think it is. C'mon what did you expect out of Sasha Mitchell? An Oscar performance? these are the types of movies that your dad will watch on the action channel or just find at the local Wal Mart in some bargain bin. These movies aren't expected to rake in some bank at the box office so get over it. They're supposed to be down to earth bad. You're a fool if you expect something like this to be very good. There's a lot of action in this movie, and a lot of fighting. The plot is as simple as it gets, infiltrate the enemy base as a world fighter who's invited to a tournament avoid getting seen and rescue your wife from the nemesis. For those who trashed the movie Double Dragon, ha ha Kickboxer 4 would've made for a nice Double Dragon replacement. It's a far better movie with the same kind of story as in the video game. Tong Po spits out one of my favorite lines of all time in this movie. It's when he says and the way he says, "One MILLION Dolla!!!" LOL Seriously every time my friend and I are gonna attempt a 3 point shot from somewhere, or a long shot in basketball, try to touch a high point and jump, we always refer to Tong Po's "One Million Dolla!" line. Priceless. Tong Po takes the beating of his life at the end of this film. Loved it.

• the plots stupid, but who cares?

  Snowman_Mcknives2005-03-30

  many compare hardcore action films like this to porn: you get some action, you get some poorly written dialog, you get some action, poorly written dialog, and so on. as it is with this, but the action is great. Sasha mitchell is surprisingly good, doing a decent impression of someone playing a leading man, but it's his high kicks we want to see, and we get them in spades. Before i go any further, you should know that this is the sort of film where the plot is put on hold for a few minutes so that the hero can fight a bar full of bikers for no apparent reason, where going and picking a fight with another bunch of bikers in a very public display is the best course of action when trying to infiltrate a tournament anonymously. OK those facts are out of the way. the plot is some sort of nonsense about a tournament (because apparently former Thai kick-boxers can very easily set themselves up as drug kingpins with nothing better to do than organize tournaments) Tong Po is back, albeit played by a different actor, and the former Goro from Mortal Kombat lookalike has discovered the joys of speech, unfortunately he speaks in an annoying whiny voice. but he is played by an impressive martial artist as compensation, who soaks up damage in the final fight until he fights the hero, one again one of those things. but who cares? the martial arts are a very good standard for a low budget, dodgy film with a no name lead (more or less), and feature some very well done, quite brutal, fights

• B0xx0red!

  Leigh L.2004-06-25

  Having not seen Kickboxer 2 or 3 (or even 5, despite the lure of the Dacascos factor), I thought for a minute I might be confused by the plot of Kickboxer 4. How foolish I was. There IS no plot to Kickboxer 4 beyond the initial setup, and as far as I can tell that leads on from previous instalments in the series about as fluidly as Friday the 13th Part III leads on from Legally Blonde 2. Anyway, as you might expect Kickboxer 4 is a fine candidate for a bad film session, though it's hard to pin down any specific element as being the out-and-out worst: the acting, script, editing and of course make-up are all award-winningly bad, though at least the fight scenes are diverting (full marks to the overenthusiastic sound effects department) and for once the direction isn't so spasmodic that you suspect Albert Pyun's hand at work long before you've spotted his name in the credits. Naturally I'm not saying it's good by any means. But it is funny, in its wanton disrespect for both the series it belongs to and simple common sense. Particularly loved Sloan's disguise (a pair of shades) as he cleverly infiltrated the fortress of the untouchable drug baron and demon martial artist who'd killed his brothers, kidnapped his wife, got him banged up in jail and been his obsessive arch-nemesis for years, yet couldn't work out who he was from six feet away. Also loved comparing this film's feeble climactic scuffle in the midst of a tea party on the lawn to the brutal broken glass brawl at the end of the original Kickboxer. It's the best kind of bad sequel there is: a kind of sad, desperate, hilarious spoof of itself. Genius.

• Worst movie ever....

  boglar2007-12-08

  I still wonder who gave this movie more than 1 point... The plot of this movie is horrible, all that memories in the begging. And that worthless efforts of movie makers to link this crap with first van Damme movie... Junk. Tong Po? You gotta be kidding, right? When I was five, my friend had better mask at the elementary school carnival. If you hate someone, recommend him this film. It is really strange that Sasha Mitchell remained in the business after this crummy Kickboxer series.. Always when I saw him in Step by step a remembered him in this lousy movie.