Movie Review: "Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor" (1994)

"Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor" sees David Sloan (Sasha Mitchell) getting framed for murder by his longtime adversary, Tong Po. After two long years in prison, Po kidnaps Sloan's wife, Vicky, to add to his growing number of sex slaves at his newfound fortress in Mexico, which is heavily guarded, and he happens to be throwing a big kickboxing tournament there where the winner takes home a whopping $1,000,000.

However, Sloan gets his chance when the DEA assigns him to go undercover in Po's fortress and bring him to justice. Along the way, he acquires the help of two friends -- Megan Lawrence, a short and stubborn blond chick who doesn't mind taking a beating or two; and Lando Smith, an undercover DEA agent who has also signed up for the tournament.

"Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor" isn't actually the worst film in the series, but it obviously has some problems if I'm reviewing it. It's certainly a darker film, which is a good thing, it has a great soundtrack, another good thing. But the plot inconsistencies don't help it, then there's Tong Po who doesn't even look or sound like Tong Po. He looks like he's undergone plastic surgery and sounds like a gay fashion designer from Asia.

For a sequel, "Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor" seems to be missing an important character: Xian (Dennis Chan). For the past three 'Kickboxer' films, Xian served as the skilled and wise trainer who helped both David and Kurt Sloan. In this film, he has vanished without a trace. There's no mention of him anywhere in "Kickboxer 4".

For Christ's sake, his student and friend (David) has been in prison and this guy doesn't even come to visit or anything? I can understand if Dennis Chan, the actor who played Xian, didn't want to be involved this time around, but what usually happens in instances like this one is the filmmakers will usually conjure up some reason for the character's absence. Sort of like what they did when Van Damme didn't want to participate in "Kickboxer 2", they just said Tong Po killed him.

Furthermore, there's no mention of the events that transpired in "Kickboxer 3: The Art of War". In the film's opening, David's narration recaps the events of the first two 'Kickboxer' movies and then he just jumps to when he met his wife, Vicky. Perhaps it's because the third movie is the only one to not feature Tong Po as the villain?

So David is assigned by the DEA to go undercover into Tong Po's fortress. But how was David actually supposed to accomplish this? It's not like he was given a disguise. All he has is a ninja suit that he dons at night time so he can go look for his wife while everyone is asleep.

During the first day of the tournament, all the fighters are sitting around the ring, including David. Tong Po overlooks everything while sitting in his throne. David just sits there behind a pillar and covering his face every now and then. Real smart.

When it's David's turn to fight, he tries to cleverly turn so that his back is facing Tong Po. Then, David's friend gets up and tries to distract Po by flirting with one of his Mistresses. What the heck was David thinking when he signed up for this? What if David's opponent happened to pull a surprise attack that could have forced him to turn around?

Furthermore, during one of the nights when David is sneaking around the fortress in his ninja suit, he's looking through the different slave chambers as he searches for his wife, but he doesn't bother closing and re-locking any of the doors behind him. So much for covering your tracks and going "undercover".