Kickboxer 3: Trafic à Rio

Champion kickboxer David Sloan (Sasha Mitchell) and his man Xian (Dennis Chan) travel to Rio for a kickboxing exhibition and a payday. He is set to fight villainous Eric Martine next week in Argentina for the championship. Street kids, Marcos and his sister Isabella, try to steal David's camera. David turns around to befriend them. Martine's manager Frank Lane (Richard Comar) enslaves girls to work at his compound and he kidnaps Isabella.

This is not bad for a second sequel to a B-movie without the franchise's big name star. At least, it's not that bad for the first half. I like Rio. I like the kid. I like Sloan and Xian. I like this until Sloan goes get the guns. The movie misses an opportunity when Frank gets them out of jail. Right there and then, he could make them an offer they couldn't refuse. In exchange for Isabella, he forces Sloan to fight in his private tournament where he can make a bundle with his clients in attendance. After a series of grueling fights, Sloan would do the big climatic fight against Martine. Sasha Mitchell is a pretty good actor with good charms and functional fighting. This is almost good.

My review was written in January 1993 after watching the film on Live video cassette.

Third entry in the series that four years ago helped make Jean-Claude Van Damme a star is a routine martial arts pic that benefits from attractive Brazilian location photography. Briefly released theatrically lat fall, the film has better-than-average chances for a video following.

Repeating from part two, Sasha Mitchell plays the uppity hero, a kickboxing champ headed to Rio de Janeiro for a tournament. Once arrived, Mitchell is befriended by street urchin Noah Verduzco and saves his young sister (Althea Miranda) from the clutches of brothel owner Richard Comar.

Coincidentally, Comar also manages evil kickboxer Ian Jaklin. Predictably Miranda is kidnapped and Mithcell is ordered to throw the big match against Jacklin to protect her. A corny happy ending sets the stage for yet another sequel.

Mitchell, unlike most of the protagonists in this genre an actor first and martial artist second, is a very personable lead and acquits himself well in the action scenes. Supporting cast is nondescript.

Sasha Mitchell reprises his role as David Sloan who has since # 2 become a bona-fide kickboxing champion who flies to Rio to compete to defend his championship however along the way he decides to take down a prostitution racket and does so without hardly breaking a sweat. Did I give away too much by the last sentence? Well let's just say that this predictable sequel is a marginal improvement over # 2. This time there is more attractive scenery, more action and more plot than # 2, which was irritatingly straight forward.) That being said the movie is still hugely flawed. The main problem dealing with the fact that K3 has little kickboxing. Indeed the fight sequence at the end as well as the opponent could've easily been written out and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Mitchell and Chan rely on more guns and while this element works for action fans, the lack of training montage and fights make this a tepid effort.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

Kickboxer 3 isn't worth the money, or the rental. Dennis Chan is a comic sidekick and teacher to David Slone who plays a chilsed jawed kickboxer who seems to resemble that bad karate kid from Karate Kid III.

Anyway, the film has David going to Brazil for a kickboxing fight but gets drawn into the seedy world of underage prositutes or something and gets drawn into the local riff-raff.

Even though he's only a kickboxer and only there to kick the ass of the Ivan Drago type kickboxer he goes out on a mission to take out the local bad guy, who isn't even Portuegese or Brazilian, but American.

The fight sequences are okay - but that is it, nothing compared to other martial art movies you can get for the same price.

Avoid it. 1/10

For reasons explained in my review of "Kickboxer 2: The Road Back", I STILL had not seen the first one when I wrote a review that included a plot summary. I have since found out there is another way to include a detailed plot summary.

This film is more of a comedy than the second one, and that's fine with me. Most of the scenes with David and Xian are funny, as are many scenes with Marcos. Even the villains give us some funny lines.

In the first film, Sasha Mitchell didn't seem that much like Cody. But he either hadn't played the character yet or hadn't played him very long. In this film, the Cody personality is there from his first line. That's not to say he is always there. Sometimes Mitchell is quite serious and tough. But either playing Cody all those years reduced his IQ or David has been getting hit in the head too much. Since I liked Cody, it was okay with me.

Dennis Chan isn't quite as good as in the second movie, in terms of quality, but he is a lot funnier.

Noah Verduzco does a very good job as young Marcos, and unlike Joey from the first movie, a similar character, he gets to stay around for the entire movie.

One of the villains is in charge of some kind of holiday celebration involving dancing by the locals. They're quite talented.

A woman selling some kind of merchandise has only a couple of lines but is very convincing as a real Brazilian.

There is nice music in Frank Lane's restaurant, where it appears wealthy men are being set up with hookers. Later in Frank's restaurant, there is more good music, this time with a female vocalist, and dancing.

And there's a great fall out of a window. To which David responds, "Now THAT's number seven!"

The fighting is good, if you like that sort of thing. It's not nearly as bloody as in the second movie, and in fact this one had a TV-PG rating when I saw it while the other was TV-14. But don't be fooled: this still isn't family fare.

It's entertaining enough.