The King of the Kickboxers

Ridiculously good martial arts choreography combined with laughably bad dialogue and an outlandish plot that borrows heavily from Kickboxer add up to a very enjoyable fighting movie. Seeing the film in Middle School when it was on cable I had trouble getting past the poor film stock, and substitution of water in the mouth as fake blood was probably too expensive to use. Coupled with lousy acting and poorly-lit sets, I just enjoyed the fighting scenes (probably on a day when I had my fill of Van Damme and Seagal). Looking back on it recently, the choreography is some of the best ever put on celluloid, and it holds up tremendously against just about all of the other fight scenes from the 90s. A combination of beautiful foreign locales, some pretty intense stunts, and a sense that the director was going for a "let's be satisfied with the first take of any non-action scene" attitude, the movie is a guilty, but VERY impressive martial arts film.