Cast:
Jean-Claude Van Damme (Chris Dubois), Roger Moore (Lord Edgar Dobbs), James Remar (Maxie Devine), Janet Gunn (Carrie Newton), Jack McGee (Harry Smythe), Aki Aleong (Khao Prahan), Louis Mandylor (Riggi), Chang Ching Peng Chaplin (Master Tchi), Ryan Cutrona (Officer O'Keefe), Abdel Qissi (Khan, Mongolian Fighter), Jen Sung (Phang Prahan, Siamese Fighter), Stefanos Miltsakakis (Greek Fighter), Ong Soo Han (Korean Fighter), Peter Wong (Chinese Fighter), Kōji Kitao (Kyoshiro Yama, Japanese Fighter) Directed by Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Review:
It feels a little nice to finally complete a movie pack, honestly. This was the fourth and final movie on a pack I somehow got about a couple of years ago that had four Jean-Claude Van Damme movies: Hard Target (which was awesome), Lionheart (fair), Sudden Death (hilariously enjoyable), and this one. As early as 1991, Van Damme was interested in doing a film that basically would be his farewell to the martial genre, as he once labeled it as "the Ben-Hur of martial arts films", albeit with inspirations taken from the Belgian comic The Adventures of Tintin. Amidst delays and other strange things (Van Damme apparently was going to fly above the city of Cannes for the 1993 Cannes Film Market in a Quest-branded hot air balloon, but bad weather scuttled these plans), thing eventually started moving with Moshe Diamant as producer for a production that had Universal Pictures distribute the film in North America. The script for the film basically became a rotted potato of half-baked ideas and disputes over who did what, with four names listed: Van Damme and Frank Dux (remember Bloodsport ?) were credited with the story (in a WGA decision rather than going with "Story by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Jean Claude Van Damme & Frank Dux" - more on that in a bit). Steven Klein and Paul Mones were credited with the screenplay, with the former being a pseudonym for Gene Quintano. Ed Khmara apparently was originally paired with Dux to help further out his ideas (after Sheldon Lettich gave some idea pitches but rejected the offer to co-write the movie). The result was a movie that ended up as a bigger hit with international audiences than in America. It is Van Damme's only released film as a director (with Frenchy, a 2008/2010 film, still unreleased). In 1998, Dux (who once claimed Bloodsport was based on his life, among other tall tales) sued Van Damme for improper compensation, arguing that his "Enter the New Dragon" and "The Quest" were the same film and that they had an agreement for money and percentage of the film's profits (somehow, one claim for the promise by Van Damme was an audio tape...that was unable to be retrieved because of damages to his apartment from the 1994 Northridge earthquake).
According to Roger Moore's autobiography, the production of the film was not a happy one, with Diamant trying to get people to work extra hours to compensate for delays that were mostly because of Van Damme showing up late on set, with second unit director Peter MacDonald being a positive for the film. Apparently, a large horseback battle was cut at the request of Diamant and Van Damme claimed that the budget was more around $12 million rather than the usual reports of $30-35 million. I think you can see at times where the movie is a bit unfocused in that regard, as it is a strangely unbalanced movie full of undercooked characters and story beats that basically come off as re-heated leftovers from Bloodsport. I will say, however, this is an amusing movie to see through to the end even in its mediocrity. You get a story in a bar with Van Damme in elderly makeup kicking ass (why not?) and it all closes with a closing of a book because, well, why not? I imagine that aside from the kicking, the real appeal of Van Damme movies is seeing what kind of hokum-sorry, charm is meant to be present with his character and the company of people around him (which namely involves flimsy romances and at least one funny moment by a supporting character). Here, he seems a bit vacant, as if he is lost in the shuffle of his own movie besides the kicks. At least his ego is funny to chuckle along with, as opposed to say, Steven Seagal? The tournament as a whole just seems repetitive (one round beatdowns that probably aren't as fun to watch as say, playing Mortal Kombat without the fatalities*) and not all that interesting beyond the attempt to raise the stakes at the end.
There's a bit more to it than that, because Moore plays a guy who tricks Van Damme's character into being sold into slavery while Remar plays the heavyweight boxing champion who never ends up fighting in the tournament...no, really. Having Moore in the film probably was a big thing in terms of "stature", even if by this point, he was nearly 70 (perhaps most famously, he once joked that he had three expressions as James Bond: "right eyebrow raised, left eyebrow raised, and eyebrows crossed when grabbed by Jaws"). While I get having him there, it doesn't make that much sense when you also have Remar there in the "guys who come along for the tournament" department, with even McGee seeming more in place than having both Moore and Remar. Gunn is basically given the equivalent of when you give someone an unplugged controller, and Qissi is basically just doing re-heated leftovers from when he was in Lionheart (you'd think killing an opponent would help in the "villain" department, but no, not really). You might be wondering: what the hell is the "quest" part? Well, the lead character is a guy who ran away from gangsters after he helped some orphans get money, promising to return to America, so I guess he's on the quest for his soul (and money). Somehow in the aftermath of denying himself the "Golden Dragon" (to save the dudes who formerly tricked him into slavery), one is told in voiceover that he returned to New York and helped the kids get off the streets (while the others get happy endings). As a 95-minute movie that is basically split between the adventure aspects (a ship boarding, the training stuff) and a repetitive tournament that happens to end with the characters going outside the ring, it's all pretty amusing hokum. Sure, it's a retread of stuff you've probably seen before, but there are some movies where inflated self-importance is part of the fun for an action movie that is exactly what you think it is. As a whole, The Quest is sometimes amusing, sometimes odd and generally watchable even as a lesser effort for Van Damme as both star and director.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
*I was never that good at getting the fatalities in Mortal Kombat, sue me.
