Scenes of the Week: Kickboxer – The Legend of Tong Po
Legends aren’t always built from a single moment in one’s life. Often times they are layered atop one another like some sort of pyramid of awesomeness. While the rare case of doing something absolutely epic does exist, you can usually trace that moment back to a series of lessons learned. When it comes to action cinema, we have gotten used to the idea that a hero can rise to the occasion and eliminate the enemy with little more than a training montage and some extra motivation. For the villains, though, I think it is usually a much more gradual climb to the top of the evil ladder.
Just check out my boy Tong Po from 1989’s Kickboxer;
When first we see the Thai boxing champ he isn’t fighting against Kurt or Eric Sloane. He’s beating the dust off of a concrete pillar in the arena. JCVD’s Kurt Sloane walks in and is in absolute disbelief when he sees Tong Po. What a great bit of intimidation!
Next is the very important fight between Tong Po and Kurt’s champion brother Eric. Tong Po handles him with a brutality that none of the white folk are used to and it leads to the whole story of Kurt learning the ancient Thai way of fighting and getting revenge on Tong Po and his handlers. You have to know that the setup of Tong Po destroying that pillar needed a payoff and this fight is it.
Next up is just some warmup fights for Tong Po as he beats the tar out of some jobbers. Kurt is still deep in his training and fighting drunks at a bar but Tong Po is annihilating dudes like this in front of cheering crowds.
Finally, it comes to this. No legendary villain would be complete without his ultimate demise at the hands of a fantastic hero like Kurt Sloane. Kurt goes through the ringer over the course of this film just trying to learn enough to take down Tong Po and we are finally gifted with this epic showdown between the two. It has to rank as a top 3 JCVD fight scene for his career and it’s a memorable way for us to rest our case as to why Michel Qissi’s Tong Po is an absolute legend.
