What it’s about: As a young, troubled kid, Frank Dux (Van Damme) was taken in and mentored by a Japanese martial arts master (Chiao), eventually becoming a surrogate son who inherited the old man’s special technique. Now that his father figure is sick, Frank takes leave from the army to honor that legacy in the Kumite, an elite, no-holds-barred fighting tournament in Hong Kong. But the sadistic current champion (Yeung), a pair of CID agents (Whitaker and Burton), and a plucky reporter (Ayres) all complicate or misunderstand Frank’s quest for identity and actualization.

Reflections: Let’s be clear, this movie is stupid. It’s based on memoirs of a real person that–unsurprisingly–have likely been wildly exaggerated. It ignores several basic questions that arise from its plot: what, exactly, is the government’s investment in Frank? How did a happy-go-lucky white guy like Jackson (Gibb) end up here? Why is Chong Li (Yeung)… like that? Forest Whitaker is trying something here, but otherwise, the acting is clearly not the priority. The music is impossible to take seriously. And its social politics are deeply questionable, even by 1980s standards.

However, with a generous eye, there is a level on which this movie is about the spirituality of physical expression. It comes alive when it sets aside the dressing of its drama and focuses on the male body and what it can do, littered with shots of stretching, twitching muscles. The fight scenes and training montages are kind of low-key; they’re shot and performed in a way that, to a layman at least, seems to be honoring the actual sport involved over filmmaking spectacle by using wide camera angles and (mostly) restrained edits. As an artistic experience, it is a vehicle for imagining the mastery of that state, the deepest possible connection with the animal, material part of who and what you are. The satisfaction of keeping that together, no matter how extreme the circumstances. And if one can be open to it, it’s surprisingly effective in eliciting a meaningful response on a visceral level, if one can ignore how badly it articulates itself.

There’s also just something profoundly silly about it: the way Frank showboats while escaping the CID guys, the ridiculous faces the fighters make, the stiffness and artificiality of the dialogue, the absolute vintage 1988 extra-mild cheese of the original songs. It isn’t–and probably shouldn’t be–a movie for everyone, but as far as big, dumb, boy movies go, this one has a certain sauce.