In Van Damme's directorial debut, he stars as Chris Dubois, a New York City orphan who stows away aboard a ship on it's way to Asia to escape a life on the edge of society, only to be captured and sold quite literally into slavery. There's even a part where he is asking a shady character played by Roger Moore called Lord Edgar Dobbs ("Dobbs, Lord Dobbs
") to "buy him" so he can have a chance to go to a mysterious place called the Lost City to enter an ultra-secret fighting championship and win his freedom and maybe a little glory along the way.
Sadly, the plot is one of the weakest I've seen in a Van Damme movie, which is not a good thing. The first hour comes across as almost an excuse just to get to the fight scenes at the end, which resemble some of his earliest fighting movie like Bloodsport and Kickboxer, but here are so brief and watered down that they are meaningless. It would be better if they just described them. But I'll get to that later.
Clearly, Chris' motivation is to get his freedom, but there is also the matter of this fighting tournament, which is a little difficult to understand. The best fighters from all of a dozen or more different countries are there to find out who is the best in the world. It's sort of like the Olympics for fighting with all those nations represented, except it's super-secret so there is no publicity and no recognition for their achievements. One journalist is there, but she had to pull a serious amount of strings in order to get there. These must be fighting purists, the guys that do it for the spiritual reasons and not the money or fame.
Anyway, this Lord Dobbs becomes interested when Chris explains to him that the prize for winning the tournament is "a big dragon made of solid gold," so Chris is able to enlist his help in getting to the tournament, provided he can win his freedom if he shares the prize with him. All of this is generally irrelevant, of course. The movie exists just for the fight scenes, but sadly, once they finally get started it quickly becomes one of the most disappointing parts of the whole movie.
The tournament takes place somewhere called the "Lost City," which is described as "the top of the world." Maybe this is meant to evoke something like Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, which calls itself "the roof of the world." There's no resemblance, but it's an interesting coincidence. Anyway, soon we learn that there is more to risk than getting the tar beaten out of you. One of the fight officials ominously warns Chris that, if he loses, he can never leave the Lost City.
How's that again? Such stipulations are always a complete mystery to me. When I was in Tibet last summer, we took a trip to Namtso Lake a couple hours north of Lhasa, which claims to be the "highest lake in the world" at about 5200 meters (I'm pretty sure that there are dozens that are much, much higher, but no matter), the locals at the lake told us that the lake was sacred to them, so if you bathe in it, or even just wash your face or hands or feet, your punishment will be that they'll never let you leave. Uh-huh. Who would they really be punishing?
Anyway, the actual tournament looks like a video game, a cartoonishly overblown ceremonial setup that reminds me of Mortal Kombat, which I understand is one of Van Damme's worst movies ever. I haven't seen it, but I can certainly imagine! Each country is represented by a goofy stereotype, often in wildly inappropriate attire. There is the German fighter who looks exactly like a Nazi, complete with calf-high standard issue military work boots, the Japanese sumo-wrestler, the squirrelly Chinese guy, the mountainous, frightening Mongolian (who doesn't look remotely Mongolian, but no matter), etc.
What I especially love is that every fighter comes out, does some bizarre dance, and then the fight begins and ends within 10-15 seconds without fail. The Turkish fighter, who looks like one of the toughest fighters of all of them, gets shoved backwards by the sumo-wrestler and then I guess he just passes out. I've never seen anyone get knocked out from being pushed, but it happens in this movie. Anyway, things get strangely familiar again when Chris takes off the headband of a fallen friend, swearing revenge with an evil stare at the scary Mongolian. This is as goofy as it gets, but for some reason it's still fun to watch Van Damme in this kind of situation. Too bad the rest of the movie is so bad.
What I mean by that, of course, is things like the conclusion of the movie, where Lord Dobbs and his hapless sidekick attempt to steal the golden horse, which has cleverly been left out in the middle of an open courtyard during the tournament, with so little security that no one notices when they try to steal it using a BLIMP. You see, they figure it's too heavy for anyone to carry off, which renders even the most conspicuous and noticeable vehicle perfectly acceptable. NICE.
The end of the movie is abrupt and cheesy, complete with a ham-handed moral and a totally uncreative mention of the future of the cast. At least Lord Dobbs mentions that he's a pirate, but used to be a captain in the Royal Navy. Interesting because that's what most pirates were in real life before they turned to a life of crime. Sadly, there's not much else here. For some good Van Damage you're better off with the earlier kickboxing films
