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The Quest (1996)
This film marks the start of my "80's/90's Action" season (inspired by JayDee). I have been increasing my collection of films of this criteria for the past few weeks, and now I will begin to flesh out my thoughts on them. And I've chosen this JCVD actioner to begin with. I'm hopefully gonna keep this up for a few weeks, until I've seen enough to be satisfied.
Jean Claude Van Damme directs the story of Chris Dubois, a street criminal who is thrust into an underworld martial arts competition, and competes in a winner-take-all challenge. Yes, this is a Bloodsport ripoff, but for my money, it's much, much, much better than that ridiculously cheesy piece of crap.
The most notable thing about The Quest is that it is the Muscles from Brussels' directorial debut. And he does a competent job throughout. Yes, he does try to inject some class into it by adding some ultimately wasted sweeping shots and he does ripoff a lot of stuff from a lot of other movies, but he makes a solid effort towards making a good film, whereas his rival Seagal's directorial effort On Deadly Ground just coasted by on the fact that it was Seagal and he was allowed to do whatever he wanted.
Acting wise, I also think JCVD is pretty ok in the role of Dubois. He doesn't convey emotion very well, but he instills his character with some likability and martial arts skill. Meanwhile, Roger Moore classes up the whole thing with an effortlessly charming supporting performance as a wily pirate. There's not much else in the acting area that stands out, but it's a JCVD film, whaddaya expect?
The only major flaw to me that this film had is that I found the action sequences less interesting than the rest of the film. I was actually kind of bored through them, and I much preferred the scenes with JCVD being JCVD and Roger Moore being Roger Moore.
But, The Quest is a good movie, for the most part. It's a solid effort from Van Damme, both as an actor and director. Bottom line: it's better than Bloodsport.
This film marks the start of my "80's/90's Action" season (inspired by JayDee). I have been increasing my collection of films of this criteria for the past few weeks, and now I will begin to flesh out my thoughts on them. And I've chosen this JCVD actioner to begin with. I'm hopefully gonna keep this up for a few weeks, until I've seen enough to be satisfied.
Jean Claude Van Damme directs the story of Chris Dubois, a street criminal who is thrust into an underworld martial arts competition, and competes in a winner-take-all challenge. Yes, this is a Bloodsport ripoff, but for my money, it's much, much, much better than that ridiculously cheesy piece of crap.
The most notable thing about The Quest is that it is the Muscles from Brussels' directorial debut. And he does a competent job throughout. Yes, he does try to inject some class into it by adding some ultimately wasted sweeping shots and he does ripoff a lot of stuff from a lot of other movies, but he makes a solid effort towards making a good film, whereas his rival Seagal's directorial effort On Deadly Ground just coasted by on the fact that it was Seagal and he was allowed to do whatever he wanted.
Acting wise, I also think JCVD is pretty ok in the role of Dubois. He doesn't convey emotion very well, but he instills his character with some likability and martial arts skill. Meanwhile, Roger Moore classes up the whole thing with an effortlessly charming supporting performance as a wily pirate. There's not much else in the acting area that stands out, but it's a JCVD film, whaddaya expect?
The only major flaw to me that this film had is that I found the action sequences less interesting than the rest of the film. I was actually kind of bored through them, and I much preferred the scenes with JCVD being JCVD and Roger Moore being Roger Moore.
But, The Quest is a good movie, for the most part. It's a solid effort from Van Damme, both as an actor and director. Bottom line: it's better than Bloodsport.