Chong Li is named at once, called iconic, and a second host who expected to be out on a limb agrees; the film launched Jean-Claude's ten-year run and is his movie, but Chong Li wins it as one of the best sports-movie villains ever, maybe number one, impossible to separate from the film, with incredible efficiency.
Chong Li versus Frank Dux in the Kumite final; the Victory soccer game; Sidney Dean and Billy Hoyle versus the King and Duck; the Friday Night Lights title game; Doug and Kate's pairs final in The Cutting Edge; Blades of Glory; the Slap Shot title game; the Cool Runnings bobsled race; the dead ballplayers' cornfield game; Snake Plissken's full-court shot
Asked how high the Chong Li versus Frank Dukes final ranks among sports-movie events to attend, ringside with the Atlantic reporter: the storylines write themselves and it has to be number one on stakes alone, a fight to the death, a reigning champion undefeated for years, the first American with a chance to win, a fighter carrying the lineage of a mentor whose son died, and Chong Li coming off his second kill of the tournament. — Shea Serrano
The soccer game in Victory is one host's pick, beating the Nazis before the crowd breaks through the walls, but it is argued down as more about the escape than the game, while the Kumite final is hype all the way; Vision Quest, never seen by one host, is called Matthew Modine's apex and the greatest wrestling movie ever.
The remaining picks: Sidney Dean and Billy Hoyle versus the King and Duck, which you could probably wander up to for free; the Friday Night Lights title game; Doug and Kate's pairs figure-skating gold in The Cutting Edge, with Blades of Glory preferred; the Slapshot (as transcribed) title game, a brawl for three periods; the Cool Runnings bobsled race; a dozen dead racist ballplayers returning to play in a cornfield; and Snake Plissken's court-to-court basketball challenge ending in a full-court shot.
Could it be a 10-episode Netflix show? The first instinct was no, but a show simply called Kumite would have one host hosed off and unreachable for the run; eight 22-minute episodes like Fleabag, and if Cobra Kai got made, give us Kumite; Netflix is told to get on it.
A remake would be good: Bolo Young (as transcribed) is about 65 and probably not returning as Chong Li, but with Ico from The Raid (as transcribed) doing the fighting one host is in; the concept of a maybe-real underground event you go find should work every ten years, a classic setup like a Fast and Furious entry or The Most Dangerous Game's hunting humans, which gets recycled every five or six years.
Nominated: 'why don't you quit, round eye' as heckling of young Frank; 'brick not hit back', an iconic hat tip to Bruce Lee; Victor Lin's 'You Jackson? You look like a Jackson', taken as proof Ray should keep his name; the film has few quotes, so the obvious 'I break you, I break your friend' from Bolo rounds out the best ones.
Returning to quotes, only three lines are said to Chong Li all film: his trainer's 'tomorrow we leave for the Kumite', Ray Jackson's 'I'm going to kill you, man', and Van Damme yelling 'Sand!'; everything said to him is fight-related, and a deleted scene where he apologizes to the broken-leg fighter is joked about.
Everyone lets Chong Li perform his finishing move; the gambling makes no sense; Dukes has to prove himself with the brick despite holding an invitation; nine fights implies 512 entrants
Everybody is too accommodating of Chong Li's finishing move: he holds conscious opponents and works the crowd while nobody pulls him aside to say stop killing people; one host disagrees, calling it his gimmick.
How gambling at the Kumite works is a mystery of shouting and thrown money, like old Wall Street pit scenes and Trading Places, and bettors throw their tickets on a knocked-out fighter; one host has attended a cockfight in the Philippines, where a Cristo holding his arms out memorizes hand-signal bets, balled-up losing money is swept from the ring and winnings are tossed back as a paper football, which sounds awful and wildly inefficient.
Why does Van Damme have to prove himself by breaking the brick when he already has the invitation? The answer offered is two-factor authentication, clicking 'I'm not a robot' to confirm it is the real guy, and the nit is rescinded.
Chong Li, the reigning champion, has nine fights in the tournament, so a single-elimination bracket needs 512 fighters; the stands show many fighters but not 512, prompting the question of whether a pile of bodies sits outside Kowloon Walled City.
Noted early as a nitpick: after failing all film at their one job, the two agents turn up in row two to watch the final.
Donald Gibb is proposed as a yes, coming off Revenge of the Nerds and First and Ten into a $65 million film where he is focal, but he was the tenth most important person in Revenge of the Nerds and the hosts settle on that film as his apex, noting this conversation has never happened on a podcast.
The actress Leah Ayers (as transcribed) is a yes: her IMDb is a hundred TV shows she was never on full-time, with a good run on Walker, Texas Ranger.
Chong Li, aka Bolo Young (as transcribed), is this over Enter the Dragon because he never fights Bruce Lee there, and this character is iconic and spawned countless memes; Kowloon Walled City is floated but Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is suggested as its actual apex.
Frank Dukes (as transcribed) hit his apex here, any time before the internet; Forrest Whitaker did not; it is Van Damme's splits apex.
Frank Dux's claimed 329-0 Kumite record was disproved by the Los Angeles Times; Sheldon Lettich says Dux's tall tales inspired the script and a corroborating witness later recanted; Dux was fight coordinator and trained Van Damme for three months; Kowloon Walled City was later demolished; Van Damme does six splits; the knocked-out tooth was real; Paco was Muay Thai champion Paulo Tocha and Swan Paredes actor Michel Qissi became Tong Po; the arcade game is Karate Champ; Mortal Kombat drew on the film
Frank Dukes' (as transcribed) résumé, shown at the end of the film, claimed 329 Kumite matches from 1975 to 1980, undefeated, with 36 consecutive knockouts; the internet is full of doubt, a Los Angeles Times story a few months after release disproved everything, and a trophy he said was awarded to him turned out to have been made down the block from his house.
He also said he was in the CIA and his father in the Mossad; co-writer Sheldon Ledich (as transcribed), one of the two writers, is quoted saying he knew Dukes for months, that most of his tales turned out to be bullshit, but the Kumite stories sounded like a great movie.
Dukes' real mistake was claiming it happened to him instead of pitching it as a movie idea, since he could have written 25 martial arts films; one story has him saying the film toned it down and the real fights happened on a temple roof with tiles cracking underfoot; that kind of fabrication only worked pre-internet, or if you are running for president.
Lettich (transcribed 'Letitch') is also quoted about Richard Bender, who swore he attended the Kumite and years later confessed Dukes coached his story; photos of Dukes do not look like a fifteenth-degree ninjutsu expert who killed for the CIA, and he is clearly what Steven Seagal later became; he was the film's fight coordinator and put Van Damme through a three-month training program.
The film was shot inside Kowloon Walled City, which was later knocked down entirely, possibly for an airport; cursory research says it was a constant fire hazard associated with crime where fugitives could hide; the hosts joke Janice's Atlantic story on the Kumite got it torn down.
How many splits Van Damme does: four are named, the drawn-and-quartered device, the temple roof, the chairs and the Pumala fight, a trailing fifth is counted without being named, and being dragged by Pumala makes six; the jump over Chong Li in the air is proposed as a seventh but ruled not to count, so the answer is six.
The fighter elbowed in the mouth really was knocked unconscious and lost teeth, and it was kept in the film; Bolo was in Enter the Dragon; Paco was played by Paolo Tocha (as transcribed), a Muay Thai champion; Michael Kissy (as transcribed), who played Swan Paredes, the broken-leg guy, went on to play Tong Po in Kickboxer, because in Thailand they could not find a local for the part and put makeup on him.
The arcade game played is Karate Champ from 1984, and the idea that martial-arts skill translates to the game is enjoyed; Mortal Kombat took huge inspiration from the film, with Johnny Cage the obvious character, and game creator John Tobias is quoted as wanting to make a gritty game based on it.
Victor Lin is proposed, with his 'You're blowing it, Frank, forget about the girl, you can be the first Westerner to win' speech; he is the only other character remembered, Chong Li is ruled ineligible and Ogre is in it too much; the pointing 'point at you, point at me' fighter is a memorable minute of shiny muscles.
The reporter is rejected not for screen time but because she is too good an actress; Chong Li could be shoehorned in if he really has only seven minutes; Van Damme's Speedo in the post-coitus scene, with his very round butt, is called a good call, with jokes that he called more people onto the set rather than clearing it; the award ends with nobody sure who wins.
During the unanswerable questions, the mentor is retroactively nominated: his choked-up speech about his dead son and the father-to-son tradition should have been the Dion Waiters pick, or the mother who just smiles knowingly with no lines.
Donald Gibb as Ogre; Janice Kent and the free press; the fight scenes; Chong Li's nose-blowing, steroid physique, 'I break you' line and celebrations; Van Damme's terrible acting; the arena; Stan Bush's 'Fight to Survive'; young Frank's Giants gear; the first underground walk to the Kumite; the name Kumite; the tournament structure; Chong Li overall
Donald Gibb as Ogre: his trilogy ran Revenge of the Nerds, First and Ten (the HBO football series with O.J. Simpson) and Bloodsport, a nice five-year run; he is the perfect sidekick with no turn coming, Jean-Claude's buddy through and through; the hosts joke the intro left out that Chong Li has done more steroids than everyone in Hong Kong combined.
Janice Kent and the importance of a free press: she hears whispers, goes undercover for the Atlantic, cracks a centuries-old event never written about, gets in the room, talks to five fighters, and pulls out her recorder in the front row where everyone will notice.
Chong Li details that aged beautifully and disgustingly: blowing boogers out of his nose about seven times, the late-eighties steroid body nobody has anymore with a chest like a love seat, 'break my record, now I break you' as a yearbook quote, and celebrations that one host finds creepy and dorky while another calls them the scariest thing possible since he cannot raise his arms over his head; his unreadable, smiling-but-furious savagery with a weird daintiness makes him scary, a riff imagines him at home with a wife and kids, glasses on, saying he got carried away and killed a guy again, which lands as both funny and unwanted since seeing him clothed in the reflection is odd, and Brock Lesnar stole the pec flexes from him.
Van Damme's terrible acting has aged best for one host because it is so bad; the director seemingly cared only about the fighting and treated dialogue as a hindrance, which the others concede was the smart play, and Van Damme was decent seven years later.
The arena is the perfect fight arena: a sandy floor you fall into, nothing to change, and alligators around the pit rejected as too far and too much upkeep.
Asked whether he would change the arena, it is called kind of perfect; the Kowloon walled city in Hong Kong, since knocked down, fascinates as a structure, and a secret fighting arena inside it is cool. — Jason Concepcion
The arena is the right size, maybe 400 seats, smaller than a middle-school gym with the crowd close; the hosts would pay $249 for a UFC or Bellator pay-per-view called Kumite with 400 fans, lots of cameras and a dirt floor.
Stan Bush, who wrote 'Fight to Survive', is the Joe Esposito of the late eighties; young Frank with his bad French accent wears a number 55 Giants football jersey and a San Francisco Giants hat, rooting for two Giants teams in two cities; a kid in the bullying flashback wears a Bartles and James (as transcribed) shirt, and the hosts wonder whether the boys knew they were going in for the sword.
Comparing the first underground walk to the Kumite with the Scorsese one-shot nightclub walk in Goodfellas, they are very close, 1A and 1B, with Scorsese edging it on camera work. — Jason Concepcion
The Goodfellas shot goes on continuously, but the Kumite walk brings you into a world you would never have access to; Kumite is called a great, incredible name, just the best.
The tournament-movie structure is added as aged best: any movie with a tournament and a board where names advance works because little needs explaining; this leads to a proposed Ringer MMA tournament where Rusillo is floated and Brian Curtis, with hands like football helmets, a Texan who has been in brawls, is called the secretly strongest man at the Ringer.
Tournament movies listed: Bloodsport, Undisputed, Karate Kid, Warrior, Best of the Best (a cumulative tournament), Enter the Dragon, Never Back Down, Mortal Kombat and The Quest, basically Bloodsport 2; the late-eighties video-game wave shaped them; the Best of the Best hero not finishing his opponent makes sense now because Daehan returns in Best of the Best 2.
Chong Li is the overall pick for aged best: 31 years later the hosts are still in awe of what they created, with every part of him interesting; his celebration, Tom Hardy's character leaving the ring immediately in Warrior, and Daniel LaRusso's confused look at his support group are called the three best post-fight celebrations.
The opening credits are loved: the music sets it up, Bolo Young (as transcribed) as Chong Li gets the last-billed credit shine while kicking giant ice blocks (how long does an ice block take to prepare and hang?), there is a terrible cut to the tree-chopping coconuts, a monkey-style fighter does MMA in front of torch-holding island natives, Ogre as Ray Jackson hears you can get killed in the Kumite, and a giant smiling bear-hug guy breaks a man's back over his knee; it is called powerful storytelling that introduces every piece before the arena is readied.
Young JVD training blindfolded and the rope device, written down as a 'rope Jesus cross', are rewatchable; the real Frank Deuce (as transcribed) said the drawn-and-quartered device was real and used on him; the hosts wonder what it would do to a normal person, note the film implies children were forced into splits, and that Kickboxer does the same thing lying down; the mentor is borrowed from seven other movies including Enter the Dragon.
The small scene where JVD honors his invitation by breaking the bottom brick of a five-brick stack is a favorite 'show how cool this guy is' moment; Ray Jackson reacts like he unwrapped a plasma TV, Chong Li is not impressed, the low-angle shot of Van Damme's gigantic eyes convinces one host he really did it, and 'brick not hit back' is recalled; nobody can explain the physics beyond a transfer of energy.
Asked to compare Van Damme breaking the brick to Eleven from Stranger Things moving things, the answer is that Van Damme is far more impressive because the power is embodied in him, with no cutting-edge science experiments or interdimensional forces. — Jason Concepcion
Eleven is said to have had multi-billion-dollar weapons-program help while Van Damme is all him; the hosts skip past the fact that he hit the top brick yet only the bottom one broke, do a Stranger Things impression, and wonder why Eleven cannot telekinetically hold her nosebleed in or carry a handkerchief.
The first-round fight montage is almost unfair to call rewatchable: a council of officials whose link to the Black Dragon Fighting Society is unclear, the ring that bends down, six minutes of fights, and Ray Jackson winning his first bout then taunting Chong Li, which one host calls a tactical error (finish the job) and another defends as setting the tone since Chong Li talked trash first after the brick; it presages the Mountain and the Viper from Game of Thrones.
Whether Ray Jackson should have been named Ray Jackson is debated: he seems to be from a mountain state like Wyoming, 'Sully' is rejected as not strong enough, and he does no MMA moves, just brute strength; JVD's 12-second knockout gets Ray's 'first round of Kumite, broke the world record' line; the song 'Fight to Survive' is rated behind 'You're the Best' by Joe Esposito.
The later-round montage: Chong Li crushes Swan Paredes, Jao Gomez (as transcribed) does a slow-motion throat slit and is beaten in about five seconds and kicked off the mat; the hosts ask how anyone keeps time with no clock or stopwatch, and how 12.2 reaches the scoreboard faster than Fenway Park posts runs.
The smiling bear-hug guy beats the crawling fighter, who makes the mistake of closing the distance, and JVD's revenge is called probably the second-best fight in the film: the slow-motion stomach punch, the shake-off, then the finish; the hosts joke there was no CGI, he really hit him, and imagine the one-take set conversation; the giant's name is Pumala.
Chong Li versus Ray Jackson is tough to watch, like Goose dying in Top Gun; celebrating was a terrible idea when one shove would have pushed Chong Li off the edge, and the shouted 'he's dead' is enjoyed; Van Damme's 'No, no!' while held back by a 5'7" man after punching through five bricks is called the Oscar reel; Ray looks murdered Apollo Creed style, and the earlier brick-with-the-head scene foreshadows his hard skull.
Semifinal gambling lines: Chong Li about a minus-600 favorite, both finalists massive favorites with the top three fastest knockouts in Kumite history; Dukes versus Paco is a wonderful fight, with Paco's Muay Thai leg-revving compared to Vince Carter starting a motorcycle and a dancing vibe in the shoulders; one host says Paco is the guy he pretended to be with his sisters.
Chong Li killing a guy: the silent ref's disgust is praised, there appear to be no rules beyond quitting and falling off the stage, the crowd and council turn their backs; Chong Li ratchets it up every fight with Dukes the final target, is a Darth Vader figure on screen about seven minutes who casts a shadow over the film, like how WWE uses Brock Lesnar; 'you are next' may be dubbed, as every line of his might be.
In the final, the blinding powder is guessed to be a salt pill and whether he went fully blind is debated; the slow-motion freak-out is the moment Van Damme might figure out acting, a pure emotional beat of a man cheated like Tim Duncan in Game 6 of 2013; nobody official saw the cheat; the slow-motion is good for an era that had not figured it out, probably the most expensive day with one special Hong Kong camera.
The comeback is one of the better sports-movie comebacks; the hospital scene with Ray's comical bloody bandage, the Harley-Davidson bandana returned, 'anytime, anyplace, anywhere,' the lady friend near tears and 'I love you, my friend' is a genuine moment in one of the worst-acted movies of the eighties, more emotional than anything Steven Seagal did; the hosts wonder what the set was like when they suddenly turned into De Niro and Pacino in Heat.
The three picks: one host's favorite scene is the hospital but his most rewatchable is Chong Li killing a guy; another goes with any of the fight montages, effectively a five-way tie, and settles on the final fight as iconic; the movie knows what people want, quick backstory, the different fighting styles, Van Damme in a Speedo.
Going a different way from both others, the pick is the introduction of Chong Li for his first fight: his name on the cards, the bad-guy sound, him rising from his seat while Victor Lin downloads his stats to Van Damme, never defeated, fastest kill, a man kicked in the throat who died on the platform; the scene sticks the landing on every part, and a good character introduction is loved more than anything else in this kind of movie. — Shea Serrano
