Best of the Best (1989)

“You’ve worked very hard. All of you. You’ve grown, as athletes and individuals. You’ve learnt a lot. We’ve ALL learned a lot. As Miss Wade would say; a teacher also learns from his students. Today, you have the chance to be the greatest martial artists in the world. It’s up to you. If you give everything you’ve got, EVERYTHING, you’ll be winners. That I promise you. You can be the best of the best.” – Coach Couzo

Number of Times Seen – 1 (12 Nov 2020)

Brief Synopsis – A group of martial arts fighters try out for the National team in order to join a competition against the Korean National team.

My Take on it – This is a film that I never had much desire to see when it originally came out and avoided for over three decades because it just didn’t interest me at all.

Unfortunately my feelings were confirmed when I finally saw it because it’s actually pretty boring and even laughable in certain aspects.

Nothing that is done here feel unique or original and there have been many other films in the genre that have done things in a more engaging way.

None of the characters are developed at all and that hurts things too much.

They attempt to give some of the characters backstories, but they all feel a bit too much and come across as seeming far too cheesy.

The film has some nice fight scenes, but overall, they fail to bring anything new to the genre.

The cast is ok, but James Earl Jones feels very miscast in the role of the coach because it is so difficult to actually believe that he knows what he is doing when it comes to martial arts.

Bottom Line – Pretty mediocre film that doesn’t feel unique at all in anything that it does. They don’t develop the characters well enough and despite many attempts to try and make each character sympathetic, it’s hard to care about any of the cheesy backstories of the characters. The fight scenes are fine, but there are many other films that have done something similar in a better way. Jones is a great actor, but he is sorely miscast as the coach of these martial artists because it isn’t very realistic to believe that he is also a martial arts expert.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – MMA legend Chuck Liddell names Best of the Best as his favourite martial arts movie. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)