Scene of the Week: Best of the Best – Roberts vs Lew
In the winter of 1989, a mish-mash team of Americans traveled east to South Korea for a showdown with some of the baddest dudes on the planet in the sport of tournament Tae Kwon Do. While Tommy Lee was the far-and-away best fighter on the squad, the heart and soul of the team was Alex Grady (Eric Roberts). A film that should have been silly and unremarkable received a dash of that famous Roberts charisma and it helped to take this movie over the entertainment edge and into “this is really good” area for me.
“Shit, Tommy pop it” should go down in the history books as one of the greatest movie quotes of all time but some folks just haven’t seen Best of the Best yet. It’s a classic scene. One in which Eric Roberts’ Alex Grady carries the hopes and dreams of the American team as he tries to whittle down the points lead that the Koreans built off of fat Chris Penn and the others. I’ve always seen Best of the Best as the martial arts equivalent to Rocky but it’s so much more than that. It has heart, plenty of American bravado, and enough fantastic scenes like the one below to satiate you desire for tae kwon do action.
