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Cross-posting in this dead thread cuz gently caress it: I watched Best of the Best this weekend. While it's not a great movie, I enjoyed it a lot. Something about the chemistry of the cast, the fight choreography, James Earl Jones as the coach, and the actual fight tournament really balances out the nonsensical choices for characters (Travis is a martial artist from Miami who wears a cowboy hat and talks like he's from Texas? He's excellent at martial arts but is racist against Asian people?), and the pandering for the PG-13 rating, and how none of the plots ever actually add up to anything? I also love how the badguys are this sinister cabal of Korean martial arts experts, and the end reveals them to be sweethearts who are dedicated to their craft and they actually hold zero animosity towards their rival competitors. Kinda surprised this movie isn't as easily available as other movies of it's ilk. It has a couple of sequels that sound insane. As for the actual martial arts? The movie says they are doing Tae Kwon Do, but Eric Roberts mainly does regular kickboxing, you barely see two of the other characters fight, and then Chris Penn does actual Tae Kwon Do? I'm pretty bad at picking up on actual fighting styles in films, and this movie isn't rigorous on knowing what it's doing either.
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Mar 9, 2020 19:45
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:38 |
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Neo Rasa posted:I absolutely love this movie. I completely realize why it's not necessarily great but it just works for me. I really love the amount of emotion they get out of having the flashbacks stylized like old timey sports footage and paralleling that with Daniel Rhee's training and conflict of wanting to cold murder said cabal leader in the ring or not. The choreography really is great to me, not "realistic" or accurate all the way per se but they do a good job having it on a line between watching a sports broadcast and watching a movie and I appreciate that a lot. There's something about the reveal that all of the villains are actually huge fans of these seemingly no-names and that the Main Badguy has secretly been crushed by the weight of accidentally killing Tommy's brother in the ring since it happened. It's like the emotion somehow come through and override the logic of it all. Eric Roberts is also really charming, somehow, despite being kind of an idiot?
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Mar 9, 2020 22:00
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