Bloodsport (1988)

Bloodsport (1988)

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Donald Gibb, Bolo Yeung, Leah Ayres, Norman Burton, Forest Whittaker, Philip Chan, Roy Chiao, Ken Siu
Director: Newt Arnold
Action Director: Frank Dux, Lee Ka-Ting, Tsui Siu-Hung

 

Being one of the most iconic martial arts movies in world cinema, there is not a whole lot about Bloodsport that I can say that hasn’t already been said (better) by others. Thirty years after the fact, it has become almost law to comment on the fact that the claim the film is based on true events is a load of tosh. Much has been said of the stories told by Frank Dux, whose stories inspired Sheldon Lettich’s script. Dux has ultimately become the Baron Munchausen of the martial arts world. If you are feeling charitable, you might say that the man suffered from an undiagnosed case of Fantasy-Prone Personality. If you are feeling ill-disposed toward the guy, you would say he’s a pathological liar.

The thing is, the premise for the film and its execution doesn’t come across as being any more far-fetched than anything that Grandmaster Ip Man has done in the dozen movies made about him in the past 15 years. Obviously, the main difference is that Ip Man had been dead for nearly four decades before filmmakers decided to turn him into the next Wong Fei-Hung. Bloodsport is the fruit of a living man’s tenuous grip on reality. A man has to work to earn the right to have his exploits embellished to the point of near-superhuman status, and even then, usually only after he has passed on. Had Frank Dux spent his life training the best martial arts actors or UFC champions, stabbing Nazis in WW2-era Norway, emerging unscathed from dozens of bar fights (with credible eyewitness accounts), or beating up whoever came up with the idea of filming bum fights, then yes, he would have earned the right to be the subject of Bloodsport.

One of Bloodsport’s claims to fame is that it popularized the “Tournament Film.” Much like Halloween and the slasher film, there were dozens of prototypes and inspirations, but this film really set the formula for imitators for the next decade and its influence can be seen to this day. The earliest example of a martial arts tournament film in the West is probably Enter the Dragon. However, that film is structured so that the tournament not only occupies only the second act, but is ultimately incidental to the main plot, which is Bruce Lee trying to put the kibosh on a drug kingpin’s operations. We only see three fights from the tournament, but with no hint as to how the tournament was going to progress.

Similar in execution to Enter the Dragon was Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976). Much like the Bruce Lee blockbuster, Master… spends the first act showing us numerous characters on the eve of the tournament. The film’s plot, such as it is, comes to a screeching halt in the second act as we become spectators to the tournament itself. For thirty minutes or so, we watch the initial elimination round before the titular villain steps onto the scene and the film switches gears. Nonetheless, we see enough of the tournament itself that we could see it continuing with quarterfinals, semifinals, etc. had the story moved its focus to Jimmy Wang Yu fighting the Master of the Flying Guillotine.

Other movies feature martial arts contests and tournaments in varying degrees of importance to the overarching plot. A tournament is a major subplot of the classic kung fu flick Five Fingers of Death. The characters spend a lot of time talking about it. When it finally comes around, it takes up less than 10 minutes of screen time during the final act right before the climax. It is depicted as a three-round, single-elimination contest with eight initial participants, although two fights are not shown. Other films feature a sort of platform contest, in which a single fighter takes on one challenger after another until he is defeated, after which that fighter does the same thing until all the contenders have been exhausted. Films like The Undaunted Wudang and Young Hero from Shaolin feature examples of that sort of contest.

Bloodsport purports to portray a large-scale single-elimination tournament, although the execution defies any attentive viewer to make sense of the set up. There are 29 fights shown, although several are depicted during a montage sequence and we only see the final blow. Nonetheless, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character gets to participate in eight different fights throughout the duration of the Kumite. That would suggest eight rounds, which in a single-elimination contest, would imply 256 participants in the first round(!). I suspect the Kumite was a little closer to seven rounds, but even then that’s 128 participants for 127 individual fights total. With that in mind, it is impossible for an attentive viewer to organize the fights we do see into a comprehensive bracket list.

It does come together a little in the Eighth-Finals. Frank Dux has a fight with João Gomez (played by João Antonio Gomes, of The Lucky Stars Go Places) while the Sumo-esque Pumola (The Protector’s David Ho) takes on the also-Portuguese-named Ricardo Morra (Filmark veteran Eric Neff). We miss the fight that would have taken Paco (Born to Defence’s Paulo Tocha) into the quarterfinals, as we do Ray Jackson’s turn. Korean killer Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) beats Gustafson (John Foster of The Good, the Bad & the Beauty), the latter whom we have not seen in the Kumite until that moment. Meanwhile, Chinese favorite Chuang Ip-Mung (Dennis Chiu) defeats another Chinese fighter, probably played Tse Kin-Hung. There would have been two other fights during that phase of the tournament that are not mentioned.

We only see two fights of the quarterfinals. The first is Frank Dux against Pumola, which the latter wins via a splits-groin-punch that the makers of Mortal Kombat would pay homage to in the character of Johnny Cage. That is followed by the tragic showdown between Jackson (Donald Gibb, who would return for the sequel in the same role) and Chong Li. The former starts off in the lead, but loses to his own hubris after landing some good blows. Missing are the fights that would have brought Chuang Ip-Man and Paco into the semifinals.

The semifinals pit Frank Dux against Paco, and then Chong Li against Chuang Ip-Man. The former fight has both men relentlessly kicking each other in the torso until one of them gives in. The latter is the only fight in which Chong Li outright kills his opponent, as he had reportedly done in the previous Kumite. The film ends with a final showdown between Frank Dux and Chong Li. One wants vengeance for the ignominious defeat of his friend, while the other wants to get back at Frank Dux for breaking his record and hurting his pride. The final fight is nothing short of iconic, with Van Damme’s bootwork getting the full demonstration.

When Van Damme visited the same premise eight years later with The Quest, he maintained the same worldwide scale of the fight, but organized it in a more coherent manor. There were sixteen contestants in that film and we see all of the fights, even if some of them last only a few moves. It a complete depiction of a martial arts tournament. The makers of Undisputed 3: Redemption (2010) did the same thing, presenting us with a full tournament with eight participants. While I would place the action direction as first priority, I have come to expect tournament movies to be presented in such a way that you can see its progression, or at least imagine it. That was a major sticking point for Tekken, where some characters would win fights and then disappear completely from the proceedings. Bloodsport doesn’t quite get it exactly right, but as a trend-setter, we can give it a little more leeway for not perfecting the formula.