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.
