My Review of "Best of the Best"

Best of the best is a martial arts fighting movie that came out back in 1989. It kind of shows its age as a lot of the movie tropes as well as movie making techniques really show its age here. Weirdly enough, I actually really liked this movie when I was a kid. I can kind of see why I did like it back in the day but watching it today, I realized it is a really bad movie.

The movie starts off with a man named Alex in some sort of construction site. He used to compete in martial arts tournaments but because of his bad shoulder he's been out of the scene. On top of that he is now a single father trying to support his son.

This all changes when he gets an invitation to join team USA for an international tournament that only includes the USA and Korea. A number of other individuals get invitations as well. All the invited guests compete for an entry onto the coveted team. This includes Tommy, Virgil, Sonny and Travis. That's basically your team.

Out of the 5 members of the team Alex and Tommy are the main stars. They're the anchors for the team. Somehow mid movie the spotlight moves from Alex to Tommy. I think this is for strategic reasons. Alex is played by a bigger movie star and you don't really see the actor for Tommy for any of the advertisements. Curiously, this movie really focuses on his story about midway into the movie.

There's a mysterious reason why Tommy isn't going full out with his training. That has something to do with the opponent that he's going to face in the tournament. You're going to have to shut your brain off because the storyline is so absurd and ridiculous that your brain can't comprehend what they were thinking.

In fact, a lot of this movie is so absurd and over the top that it's hard to take anything seriously. Even the acting is over the top and quite absurd. In some ways it was kind of par for the course back in those days. It's kind of hard to watch this stuff in today's day in age. The special effects are so crude, that goes the same with the makeup and fighting choreography. This is a really outdated movie.

One of the most ridiculous things that made me kind of laugh was that the villain. What he does to Tommy's brother is so extreme it's hard to believe. How is this sport still running and on national television if this is a possible occurrence? To top it off the guy is only fighting with one eye. He's supposedly bigger than Tommy but Tommy is clearly bigger than him. Everything about this movie doesn't make sense. Again you're going to have to shut off your brain to keep yourself going.

The ending of the movie just made my eyes roll to the back of my head. I can't believe I really liked this movie back in the day. The weird paced relationship of the characters probably didn't bother me back then. It could have been the comradery between the characters. Possibly the over the top, absurd fight scenes were the thing that got to me. Then again it could have been the culmination of everything put together.

Overall, I can't believe how bad this movie was. It especially hurt because I remember liking this movie when I was a kid. Everything about it screams 80s and in some ways that's a genre of its own. Maybe I just wasn't in that state of mind to enjoy this one but it really sucked. I have to give this a 3 out of 10. It's not recommended and I don't think I'll be watching it again anytime soon.