SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

When his old enemy Tong Po kidnaps his wife, David Sloan has to travel to his stronghold in Mexico to take part in a violent kickboxing competition.After the departure into more straight-ahead action-thriller territory with the third instalment in this series, Kickboxer 4 returns the story to the main threads of the first two parts. This includes bringing back the character of Tong Po. Although, they didn't manage to get the actor who played him and instead use a different guy and simply apply bizarre facial make-up to make him look similar. He just looks weird. Anyway, this instalment is actually pretty entertaining. Sasha Mitchell once more has a certain charm in the lead role, while there is some pretty good fight choreography, particularly in the competition scenes. It's also pretty violent, it was even banned in the UK on original release (admittedly, it's nowhere near violent enough to justify that decision!). It also has some utterly gratuitous nudity thrown in for no reason whatsoever and you can't argue with that. All-in-all, this is another entertaining entry in a series that I have to admit to liking.

At the start of this installment of the Kickboxer franchise, we learn that the dastardly Tong Po (Krifa) has framed David Sloan (Mitchell) and sent him to prison for a crime he didn't commit. As if that wasn't enough, Po kidnapped Sloan's wife. The DEA then approaches Sloan with an opportunity to get Tong Po: enter his underground Martial Arts tournament under an assumed name and take him down from the inside. Sloan agrees, mainly so he can find and rescue his wife. So he goes to Mexico where the tournament is being held, and he ends up meeting a spunky female fighter, Megan (Krasnoo), but also has to contend with Tong Po's ruthless bodyguard, Bill (Matthews). Will Sloan finally defeat Tong Po and bring his wife to safety? Find out today! Kickboxer 4 shows us a more serious, more adult David Sloan. Gone are the carefree chuckles and bright, multi-colored Zoobas. Now he wears toned-down plaid shirts and never cracks a smile. Albert Pyun, as he always does, creates a black hole of happiness where no fun can escape. But that being said, this is one of the strongest Pyun movies we've seen to date. It has a nice pace and maintains the viewers' interest with a variety of different methods.The movie opens with some clips from the previous three Kickboxer installments. There are even a few spoilers, so watch out. But now, Tong Po has gone through a hilariously absurd evolution: in the first movie he was simply a Thai kickboxer, but now he's "the most powerful drug lord in Mexico". How you make a job transition like that, we can't figure out (nor do we want to). And let's not forget that this movie came out in 1994, at the height of Mortal Kombat-mania. The tournament set up by Tong Po bears many similarities to the classic game, and in case any of these were lost on you, Po even says at one point, "finish him". But perhaps the most stunning aspect to Tong Po's reinvention is that he's now...wait for it...a record producer! Imagine him in the control room with your band! We wish this angle was expounded upon more, and not just mentioned in a throwaway line.As far as the DEA giving David Sloan a secret identity, the name they chose for him, "Jack Jones", isn't going to win them any prizes for originality. Unless they're trying to confuse Tong Po, making him think the British pop singer from the 60's is now a Punchfighter. Sloan spends a lot of the running time of the movie sneaking around the compound looking for his wife. He even dresses up as a ninja to do so. But if he really wanted to blend in, he'd wear a wildly-colored button-down shirt. Whoever chose the shirts for the goons in the movie is to be applauded. They're one retina-singing eyesore after the next, and they look like if Jackson Pollock designed a line of Cosby sweaters. But Tong Po's "shirt patrol" literally are one of the most colorful aspects of this movie. Like how tennis matches have ballboys, Po's death fights have colorful blobs drag the beaten, bruised and dead bodies off the court.Interestingly, one of the fighters has a Dacascos shirt, and he was to take up the mantle from Sasha Mitchell in the next and (to date) final installment, Kickboxer 5 (1995). Could that have been foreshadowing? But as for the movie as a whole, clearly Pyun learned something about fighting movies after the horrendously awful Bloodmatch. Sure, a lot of the fight scenes could have used some music, and Pyun does seem to have some sort of allegiance to Thom Matthews, but on the whole, Kickboxer 4 is a crowd-pleaser. Seemingly against all odds, Pyun pulled off a decent movie this time. We've got to give credit where credit is due.So if you're ready to see Cody, er...I mean David Sloan back in action one more time, you just might find that Kickboxer 4 is a pleasant surprise.

Personally I though this movie was rather cheesy by the fact that it was Jean Claude Van Dammewho played Tong Po in some rather very bad make-up effects. This movies only saving grace is it was graced with the adorable Michele "The Mouse" Krasnoo. Michele "The Mouse" Krasnoo entered her first tournament at age ten and received her black belt at the age of thirteen. Since then, she has become one of the most popular competitors in tournament history, her size (5 feet) and high pitched kiai inspiring the nickname "Mouse". She is recognized by the National Black Belt League as a world champion, Winner of well over 300 first place trophies in major competitions, Michele "Mouse" Krasnoo reigns as one of the top tournament competitors of all time, and is also a rising Martial Arts action film star.I give movie a thumbs up for Michele "The Mouse" Kasnoo. Thumbs down for the movie.

Firstly, I'll start with what the film actually does right. Some of the fight choreography isn't bad and the editing is better than usual for Albert Pyun, the New Mexico locations look nice and the overall production values are much better than usual for Albert Pyun as the picture is clear and colourful, there are a couple of basic stunts (not well used however) and Sasha Mitchell does the best he could possibly do given the material surrounding him.Now for the rest, it was full of so many things which simply made say "Huh?" or had me in hysterics that I don't know where to start. The villain who goes by the name of "Tong Po" in the previous Kickboxer movies wouldn't return in this. For a hack director in a schlocky B-movie, that is no problem. Attempt to use stock footage and then get a double like Ed Wood did with Bela Lugosi for Plan 9? Nope, although Pyun did do that with Snoop Dogg in Urban Menace and The Wrecking Crew, he has gone one step further. This time, he has hired a new actor to take his place and applied ridiculous makeup to make him look like the original actor. The result looks like like somewhere between The Joker from Batman and a Thunderbirds puppet and looks even more funny when he's standing outdoors and his skin is red with sweat, but his face remains a light yellow tone. If you are familiar with Pyun, he often uses close-ups of the actors faces in his movies, often so two characters who are not on set at the time can be edited together to look like they're in conversation. He continues that trend in this, and the "Tong Po" character is seen in close-ups several times, revealing how truly bad the makeup is and making me laugh harder than I have at a movie in a long time. Not since I saw Anna Nicole Smith in Skyscraper have I laughed through every single scene one character has been seen in. And when he tries to act scary and threatening, don't get me started. Let's just say he's as scary as a fluffy little bunny rabbit. I really felt sorry for the entire cast who had to act around this character and pretend to be taking him seriously. And what makes it even funnier is that exactly the same weak plot could have been executed with a new villain. There was absolutely no reason why Tong Po had to be part of this plot. Much of what little budget there was seems to have been spent on a pointless and completely ridiculous barroom brawl. Michele "The Mouse" Krasnoo is sitting there minding her own business drinking a can of Coke when a bunch of rednecks come and pick on her. By amazing coincidence, at just the right time Sasha Mitchell comes and saves her. Now my first impressions were "Huh?" when I saw this. Krasnoo was 19 when this was filmed but looks about 15. Now just why was she sitting in a redneck bar to drink a can of coke to begin with? This scene is where Pyun has used what budget he had for stunts it seems but he has no idea how to use them. For example, the biggest stunt is when one of the rednecks gets thrown through a window (which shatters like plastic) and when he stands up about 3 metres away from the bar, a van comes driving up about 20 MPH and launches him through another window back into the building. Now why would a van be moving at that speed while only a few feet away from the building unless the driver was unbelievably careless while parking? It reminded me of the exploding car in U.S Seals which drives into an area where a tank is causing having at about 50 MPH. Truly stupid. And after being saved, Krasnoo's character is extremely obnoxious and unthankful to Mitchell for saving her. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more stupid, it turns out she is also a fighter and is entering Tong Po's tournament. Which now leads me to her performance. Not content with one hilariously bad character in the movie, we now have another one. You will get better line delivery from your average computer voice generating software program. Not only that, but in fight scenes with grown men who are mostly over a foot taller than her, it looks silly and unconvincing. I have no doubt she has skills and definitely has great flexibility, but this film does a very poor job in demonstrating that. Not all the fights are bad however and there are some decent ones, but Pyun ruins any excitement they may have had with bad camera angles and turning the camera towards the spectators or "Tong Po" at awkward moments.Overall, this is awful but I think anybody with the right kind of humour must see it as it's yet another example of film-making at the bottom of the food chain. I will give it that I found it absolutely painless to sit through unlike some of Pyun's other "movies". If you are after an exciting martial arts flick, then stay away. The climatic fight scene is especially funny, where Mitchell and the so called "Tong Po" battle it out on top of tables and after losing the battle, our plastic faced friend runs away leaving it open for another sequel. Yay! It hasn't happened and after the final product of Kickboxer 4 and the fact there's already been a 5 with completely new characters, I can safely say it won't happen. But to think that Pyun thought this was good enough to make another sequel and that his "Tong Po" was convincing enough to return doesn't say a lot for the intelligence of his target audience.