The Quest
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Movie Reviews of The Quest
Movie Review: Van Damme Entertainment for Everyone!
Summary: 4 Stars
I found this Van Damme movie to be an entertaining story that doesn't lose out on the action. In some ways it's a typical Van Damme flick where he must fight a series of villains to arrive at the ultimate opponent in an ultimate fight scene (Bloodsport, Lionheart, etc), but this also adds a story that is interesting that will keep non-action fans entertained as well. A good movie for a stormy night or for a lazy Sunday.Movie Review: Van Damme & Moore: Quest Without A Compass
Summary: 3 Stars
When watching "The Quest", you can tell that Jean-Claude Van Damme's career was already in its mainstream descent: directed by himself, it's basically a retelling of Bloodsport without any and all cult intrigue and co-starring a way-past-his-prime Roger Moore who would go on to publicly blast his own involvement later on. Though I've never been a hardcore fan of Van Damme's, I'm always ready for a good action film - "Quest", however, is merely a bad film with good action scenes, remaining miles behind what the Muscles did earlier in his career before he decided to take up the reins himself.
The story: Van Damme is Christopher Dubois, a 1920s pickpocket whose frequent run-ins with the law get him shanghaied on a smuggling ship from which he is "rescued" by a mercenary Englishman (Moore, The Spy Who Loved Me) who sells him into a Thai fighting circuit. The two inexplicably reunite and agree to aid eachother as they enter a Tibetan tournament pitting fighters from all over the world for the prize of a valuable golden statue.
Let's get right to the good stuff, the fighting. In short, it's good but not great. The choreography of the encounters in the tournament (done by Peter Malota, returning from Double Impact) regularly surpasses that of "Bloodsport", with faster action that is just as hard-edged and fine representation of a wide variety of fighting styles. Notable combatants include a returning Abdel Qissi (Lionheart), pro wrestler Kitao Koji, Stefanos Miltsakakis (Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite), and Ong Soo Han (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story). Disappointing is the length of most of these fights: with the exception of Van Damme's fisticuffs, each encounter is lucky if it lasts more than 20 seconds, even when the complete fight is filmed from start to finish.
Sadly, the tournament only begins about halfway into the movie, and just about everything leading up to it is Van Damme's lackluster attempt at storytelling: it seems like he was going for something epic and character-driven, but despite its impressive scope, the film feels very compact and vanilla, and is populated by stock characters that don't grow on you. Some of them - like Janet Gunn (Carnosaur 3: Primal Species) as a worldly newspaper reporter, role Madonna turned down - feel practically forced on you because their prominence grossly exceeds their contributions to the story. Production values are sound, although that may be because a lot of the movie was shot on-location in places whose beauty speaks for itself.
The repetitive use of slow motion during the fight scenes might irk others than me, but that's not going to bring down the film down even more if you already dislike it. While I enjoy the movie more than some of Van Damme's more universally-acclaimed features, "Quest" will give viewers plenty of time to use the bathroom or make popcorn before anything of note happens. Though fans will surely scoop this one right up, newcomers to Van Damme should save this film for later in their experience.
Movie Review: Boy, Van Damme sure likes to get hit in the face.
Summary: 3 Stars
In Jean Claude Van Damme's oeuvre, Nowhere to Run, Hard Target, and Timecop are the cream, while suckfests like Sudden Death, The Order, and Derailed won't even draw flies. The Quest falls somewhere just below the best of Van Damme's films. Having just recently seen Tony Jaa in action, Van Damme's martial arts stylistics pale considerably in comparison. Still, The Quest, coming out about a decade before Jaa's films, showcases some nice, energetic martial arts sequences. And it was cool that every country was represented by its own distinctive fighting style (savate for France, sumo for Japan, snake/monkey/tiger style for China, capoeira for Brazil, nut-twisting for Turkey, and, er, boxing for the U.S.).
In 1925, top fighters representing various countries are invited to the Lost City to participate in Ghang-gheng, a martial arts tournament of the world's best fighters, the prize of which is a dragon statue made of gold. Meanwhile, in New York, Chris Dubois (Jean Claude Van Damme) tries to fend for several street urchins under his care while evading the police and a gang leader who wants Dubois to work for him. When a chain of events leads to Dubois being wanted for murder, he jumps onboard a smuggler's ship, where he is taken prisoner by the ship's crew and is forced to slave labor. When he is rescued by the roguish Lord Edgar Dobbs (Roger Moore) and his buccaneers, Dubois journeys with him to Muay Thai Island, where Dobbs sells him to Khao (Aki Aleong), an elder of the Muay Thai martial arts.
Six months later, Lord Dobbs is gallivanting about in Bangkok. He goes to a dive to watch a kickboxing match and is shocked to see that one of the competitors is Dubois. Later, Dubois corrals him and demands that he help him get to the Lost City, where the Ghang-gheng tournament will take place. Dobbs, being a greedy bastard, instantly agrees. The rest of the film pretty much spirals down into the formulaic, centering on match after match after match...This time, Van Damme's tournament nemesis is an arrogant Mongolian giant, who may not be steeped in martial arts but is incredibly strong, cruel, and destructive.
Van Damme not only stars in this one, but also takes a decent turn behind the director's chair. He knows when there are better actors around (which is pretty much when he's not alone), and he wisely leaves the emoting to veteran actors Roger Moore and James Remar, who make the best of their limited roles. The debonair Moore is fun to watch as he toils away in his post-James Bond days, while Remar plays it straight-forward as the straight-shooting heavyweight boxing champ and Dubois's mentor. Van Damme himself is his reliably stoic, one-note self, ever fruitlessly plumbing the shallows of his acting talent. The other semi-decent actor in here is Janet Gunn as journalist Carrie Newton and token cute chick. She even seems mildly interested in being in the film, an attitude worthy of several kudos. The rest of the cast are negligible and stereotypical, and I doubt most of them are even actors.
The Quest is certainly hackneyed movie-making and borders on camp. It's your basic B-movie, martial arts cheesefest. And if you go into this chop-socky bearing that in mind, you'll have fun. Because, while it is derivative, it's also quite entertaining. And it's always nice to again see Van Damme's helicopter kick. The best part of the movie, by the way, is the match between the acrobatic Brazilian and the equally-acrobatic, style-changing Chinese. Anyway, enjoy the movie. Or not.
By the way, does anyone know where that bump on Van Damme's forehead came from?
Movie Review: Pretty good for Van Damme
Summary: 3 Stars
Jean Claude usually has some poor taste in the scripts he takes on but The Quest was actually a decent role and movie for him. As usual, Van Damme is pitted against the best fighters in the world and they are all brought to the Forbidden City in a quest to find the best. A really good point to this movie was that it was really diverse in the martial arts in this movie. There was everything from both styles of Capoiera (Brazilian and Angola), Muay Thai kickboxing, Kung Fu and Karate and of course, how could you go wrong with the occasional brawler?
One thing that really ate as far as the movie was concerned was that there were some corny parts like how Van Damme gets left behind at "Muay Thai Island"? Why didn't they just say he gets left in Thailand, wouldn't that have sounded a little better?
Anyway, for a Van Damme movie it's pretty good and worth a rental. I wouldn't put too much hype into this one because like I said, you're not really watching this one because it's a great story or the acting is so great, it's because the action in this one speaks for itself.
Movie Review: One Of Few
Summary: 3 Stars
This is one of very few Van Damme movies one can actually sit through without falling asleep or laughing to death. Much of its success has to do with Moore's multiple appearances which keep the audience interested.
Van Damme has a lot of kids to look after and he wants to give them a better life. He decides to sign up for a championship fight involving one fighter for each country. The prize of course goes to the last man standing.
This film is plagued by the typical rudimentary plot for these types of screenplays and, as always, is crowded with bad actors sounding even worse because of a worthless script. The fighting scenes were O.K. but nothing compared to a Bruce Lee or Jet Li film. Again, the most delightful part of the film is Roger Moore whose character is both a helper and a scoundrel at the same time.