From what I understand, in the second half of the 90s, it all went a bit floppy for Van Damme, and for many of his fellow 1980s big-screen-behemoths-turned-straight-to-video-chancers. Jean Claude showed up in a succession of questionable films, like Streetfighter the Movie and Maximum Risk, while the action demigods of the 80s were becoming increasingly crusty and were slowly being usurped by fresh faced young whippersnappers like Keanu Reeves and Will Smith.
All of which only makes it more astonishing that, at this precise juncture, Van Damme was somehow able to get big studio approval and funding for what was, in essence, a vanity project that he declared himself ready to write, star in, and even, for the first time, direct, and even more shockingly, that he was able to persuade the venerable Sir Roger Moore to join him in this unpromising escapade. Perhaps most gobsmackingly of all, the result isn’t a complete catastrophe of Steven Seagal-esque proportions, but rather a passable and even intriguing action movie, and arguably everything that Streetfighter the Movie should have been.
The film opens in 1920s New York, where we first see Van Damme’s character Chris Dubois in a most incongruous predicament; as a juggling clown on stilts, the Fagin to a band of child street thieves. Unwelcome interest from the police and mafia forces him to flee the United States, which he does as a swabbie on a Turkish cruiser, until he falls into the hands of British buccaneers led by the roguish but gentlemanly thief Lord Dobbs (Moore). Dobbs sells him into slavery on an exotic island, where he is trained to be a tournament fighter.
A chance and thoroughly awkward reunion with Dobbs, along with American journalist Carrie Newton (Janet Gunn), sees the three conspire to get Dubois into the Ghang-gheng, a mysterious invitational tournament contested by the best fighters in the world, so that they can steal the grand prize; an enormous golden dragon. They make their way on elephants to the Lost City of Tibet, first conning and then convincing the US participant, heavyweight boxing champion Maxie Devine, to let Dubois take his place in the tournament. The last third of the film comprises the Ghang-gheng itself, as Dubois gradually distances himself from Dobbs’ dishonourable plan and struggles to fight his way to victory, like a real action hero.
At first glance, then, this sounds like a convoluted mess; The Quest essentially transitions from Oliver Twist to Pirates of the Caribbean to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Streetfighter in its opening hour, with a bit of Conan the Barbarian thrown in when Dubois performs as an enslaved Muay Thai fighter. It’s perfectly preposterous, of course, but in the end, the core of the plot is essentially the same as Bloodsport or Kickboxer: patriotic American fights exotic opponents in the mysterious Far East with the Stars and Stripes fluttering behind him, if you can ignore the inconvenient French accent.
But what makes this particular iteration of the story interesting is that, whereas the earlier tournament fighter films kept their postcolonial subtext relatively muffled, The Quest renders it explicit by playing out in the 1920s, the absolute zenith of European colonialism and also the beginning of the end of the imperial project. Almost every scene is firmly embedded in this context; the ostensibly gentlemanly Dobbs turns out to be nothing more than a common thief, mirroring the rapaciousness and hypocrisy of the Empire on which the sun never set; the denizens of the Global South are either noble savages, fighting with heart and pride in the tournament, or primitives who will cut your throat and toss you overboard; and in the end, the future belongs to the Americans, who will win the tournament and reemphasize their commitment to universal human rights by not killing anybody along the way and not claiming the wealth of the colonies for themselves.
Of course, most of the performances are shaky, but that’s only to be expected – it’s an action film directed by Jean Claude Van Damme – and indeed, its main star is commendably able to once again channel some of the compellingly good-natured innocence that he embodied in his first films. Overall, the context of The Quest is arguably more interesting than Kickboxer or Bloodsport, the story richer and more complex. It lacks the brilliant simplicity (and awesome Paul Hertzog soundtracks) of its forebears, so it’s ultimately less seminal than them, but it’s certainly better than Streetfighter.
Overall Rating: * * *