The Quest

My knee jerk reaction to The Quest was that Van Damme, was trying to recreate some of his early success that came from Blood Sport in this movie. By making a movie about a martial arts tournament he gets to have multiple fight scenes, that he does not have to necessarily participate in and still keep the action moving. Van Damme also wrote and Directed this movie, which may explain the random back story that gets Christ Dubois, Van Damme’s character, to the Ghang-gheng martial arts tournament, in stead of just focusing on the tournament itself. That said for a first time behind the lense he did well.

In short Van Damme is a street hustler that has adopted a bunch of young orphans and is training them to be hustlers also. Eventually Dubois’ dirt catches us with him and he has to leave New York, only to find himself a slave on a gun smuggling ship. The ship he is on is taken over by buccaneers, the captain of this crew is Lord Edgar Dobbs played by Roger Moore, yeah that’s right Van Damme went out and dug-up Roger Moore for this flick, one thing leads to another and Van Damme ends up on an island in Thailand where he allies himself with the Muyi-Thai fighters and their trainer. After a brief stay with these fighter he crosses paths with Dobbs again. This time they strike a deal to go the Ghang-gheng and steal a large solid gold statue.

Some stuff happens, but you don’t want to hear about that you want to hear about the action sequences. I have to give it up to Van Damme, while story may have been so, so, he did a nice job behind the caamera capturing the action, particularly the tournament, which featured a variety of fighting skills. What also made the tournament stuff work was that the fighters that represented their various countries became mini-charicatures of each country. So the dude from Spain had a white silk shirt and some black pants and fought almost like he was dancing, the guy from china utilized different kung-fu styles; monkey, tiger, etc. The guy from Brazil was a capoera fighter and had the drums accompany his fighting. You get the point.

In all the action sequences that Van Damme was in he utilized a lot of his traditional jump kicks and spinning kicks, although the more movies he makes the more varied his fighting becomes. He is still a kick first fighter, but he did incorporate more punches and elbows to reflect the Thai influences in his fighting. The climax of the movie was the final fight scene between Van Damme and Khan, the Mongolian fighter, which was played by Abdel Quissi, which played the role of Van Damme’s last opponent in Lion Heart. This fight was a little over the top, I think Van Damme took too much of a beating to believe that it would be possible for him to actually come back and beat this guy, but it was a fun fight to watch.