Bloodsport ★★½

IF I had been a 10-year-old boy in 1988 I might have loved Bloodsport.

But I wasn’t and this 1988 American martial arts film largely passed me by.

While Newt Arnold’s film is pretty typical of the action output at that time, it is most notable for giving the Muscles from Brussels, Belgian exponent Jean-Claude Van Damme, his start.

While Van Damme doesn’t cover himself in acting glory, he did enough to demonstrate the level of physicality and charm to make him one of the biggest B-movie action stars of the 1990s.

He has also managed to keep working and fighting on screen at a level that hasn’t made him the kind of laughing-stock that his contemporary, the Putin-loving Steven Seagal, has honed to perfection.

Bloodsport is also notable for a few other reasons. It features a range of fighting styles within its Enter the Dragon-like story of the staging of an illegal international martial arts tournament and inspired development of the popular Mortal Kombat video game.

And it’s based on the memoir of interesting real-like character Frank Dux, whom Van Damme plays, who claimed to be all sorts of things, since discredited, including an FBI agent.

It seems like things have turned full circle as Seagal now thinks he is Frank Dux.

Watched on Prime.