5 Questions: Kickboxer 5
It has been years since I have seen any of the Kickboxer sequels and in fact, I never saw Kickboxer 5 in my life.
And as luck would have it, as I watched I had some questions, so I now present to you another exciting edition of 5 Questions…
1- Where’s Sasha Mitchell?
While Jean-Claude Van Damme started the franchise, Sasha Mitchell would take over and star in three of the sequels. I’m not really sure why he didn’t return for the fifth and what would ultimately be the final installment of the series.
The movie explains his absence by killing his character off. We only hear about his death, we don’t actually see it. But I will say Mark Dacascos stepped up and did a great job as the star of the film. And I’m glad they didn’t try to make Mark a Sloan, instead he is Matt Reeves, a kickboxing friend of Sasha’s character David Sloan. We already had two Sloans in the first film that looked nothing alike.
2- What is this independent wrestling?
The movie’s main storyline is that Mr. Neegal (played by James Ryan of Space Mutiny infamy) was a kickboxer who basically got blackballed by all the reputable kickboxing organizations, so he decides to start up his own organization based out of South Africa and recruit the best kickboxers from around the world to compete for him. If they don’t sign a contract with him… they end up dead.
It reminded me of my time in the world of independent wrestling. A wrestler would go to the booker of the company and actually request to be made the champion of the organization. If that didn’t happen, this wrestler would go to other promotions in the area to see if they would make him their champion and if that didn’t work , they’d just start promoting their own shows and make themselves the champion. This is all sad but true by the way.
3- How did Angie know when and where to pick up her brother Paul and Reeves?
Neegal hires Paul Croft (Geoff Mead) to kill Matt Reeves. When Croft instead aligns himself with Reeves and the two travel to South Africa to take down Neegal, they are arrested by the authorities that Neegal has in his pocket.
Well we can’t very well have our hero just rotting in jail for the rest of the movie, so Reeves and Croft bust out of jail and are on the run. I’m not sure if I missed the scene where Paul calls his sister Angie on a time and rendezvous point or how they could even pinpoint a time… but some how some way Angie is at the right place at the right time. Maybe her GPS can specifically track Mark Dacascos.
4- What are the odds all the kickboxing championships from around the globe all have the same basic design?
As I mentioned earlier, Neegal’s grand plan was to have the best kickboxers in the world competing in the organization he named after himself. He had all the championship belts he collected, either because a champion agreed to work for him or because he had them killed if they refused and their belts brought back to him. Neegal had all the belts he’s collected on display behind him in his office.
Seeing that the nations of the world could obviously agree on a design for their Kickboxing championship belts gave me hope that one day we will have world peace.
5 – How was this plan of Neegal’s ever going to work?
I know they wanted to paint Neegal as a mad man, but seriously his plan would have never worked. I was glad one of his minions spoke up at the end. All the clues, all the motive, it all pointed back to Neegal. You don’t need to be a seasoned detective to figure that out, in fact you only need to watch one cop show, (perhaps Hawaii 5-0 also starring Mark Dacascos), to know how to bring Neegal to justice.
