To the Death (1993)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Admirable film.

Blistering performances.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

A kickboxer retires at the top of his game and turns down a lucrative fight deal with a shady kickboxer promoter who kills the losers of his matches. Then the boxer's wife is blown up. Who might have done it? Hm. That seems pretty obvious. The kickboxer, rather than find out who killed his wife, becomes a drunk. The promoter pulls him out of the gutter and makes the same offer which he now accepts, for some reason. Include in the mix his the promoter's coke-whore girlfriend. This movie is a mess. All of the clichés you'd expect are here. Even the MC of the matches, dressed up like Joel Grey in Cabaret, seems pretentious and boring.

In this REAL sequel to American Kickboxer 1 (1990), "Quinn" (Barrett) retires from Punchfighting and lives a peaceful life with his beloved wife Carol (Udy). "Denard" (Qissi) is seemingly obsessed with taking on Quinn in one last match (don't worry, we're going to explain why the names are in quotes later in the review). Quinn refuses to fight, which upsets maniacal millionaire Dominique Le Braque (Whitehead), who stages fights. It angers him so much, he kills Quinn's wife. Now distraught, Quinn hits the skids, living in a seedy motel and drinking himself to death. Preying on Quinn's new vulnerability, Dominique invites Quinn to live at his palatial estate and train to get back into shape so he can fight and win a lot of money. Quinn agrees, not knowing they are Punchfighting matches...wait for it...TO THE DEATH! (In a slight twist on that tale, you don't actually FIGHT to the death, if you lose the match, an evil ref just comes in and shoots you in the face.) After a some plot padding, Quinn develops a relationship with Dominique's wife Angelica (Bestbier), and the sinister Dominique doesn't take very kindly to that. Will Quinn ever escape his clutches? Or will Quinn don his craziest Punchfighting Pants and fight his way out? About the names being in quotes above, confusingly, even though there were characters BJ Quinn and Jacques Denard in American Kickboxer 1, Here, for some unknown reason, Barrett here is Rick Quinn and Qissi (a different actor) is some other Denard. Why this happened, we don't know. Maybe Cannon demanded it.We like John Barrett, but this movie never really rises above decent. Whitehead as the over-the-top baddie is like some kind of cross between Raul Julia and Tim Curry. He chews the scenery well. Rather than give a thumbs up or thumbs down as to whether the fighter will live, he delicately throws a rose. Now we know where the producers of The Bachelor get their ideas. Le Braque even dresses in a Clockwork Orange-style getup. In another absurd device, the ring announcer is none other than a man in harlequin makeup reminiscent of The Joker (he even tells really bad jokes and tries to outdo Whitehead in the crazy sweepstakes). He's truly one of the original Insane Clown Posse.Willard the reporter who looks like Owen C. Wilson is back (Le Plat), but presumably it's some OTHER Willard. Quinn trains for his Punchfighting matches in dress pants, but really, if you look objectively, the Punchfighting in this movie is not that great. Additionally, the plot suffers from all sorts of maladies, but mainly pacing issues, and the script should have gone through a few more drafts - there's a good movie in here somewhere but it's buried in a few layers of crud.One of the better aspects of this movie, as we've seen so many times before, is the title song. The rap by Edward Jordan is a lot of fun. But really, the main flaw here is that the original Jacques Denard did not return. He really brought a lot to the table in the first film.If you're just itching to see the continuation of the saga of Quinn, Denard and Willard, by all means, seek this movie out - but as an example of an entirely cohesive film or an example of a great Punchfighter....this sadly isn't really it.For more action insanity, please visit comeuppancereviews.com

This film was really poorly done. Now, movies like "To the Death" have a charm, and that is that they are not your typical Hollywoodesque martial arts films. However, there is a limit, and this film had almost nothing going for it. The good news is that Michel Qissi has a role, and is a pretty good on camera fighter. I hope he makes some more movies (Kickboxer is one of my all time favourites). The rest was done poorly. The love interest was not as pretty as one might expect, and the evil fighters in the underground really didn't look so tough. A referee? Give me a break. And what's with the way the "losers" of the bouts meet their doom? The gun thing is a cop out, what ever happened to the "you kill your opponent with your own hands idea"? I wasn't moved at all, the choreography was done by Qissi,he was good, but everyone else was mediocre. I don't just want to see wild punches and ordinary run of the mill kicks, although they may be perfectly executed. I want aesthetically pleasing moves that are well thought out. In short, this film just doesn't cut it.