THE QUEST
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling
(1996) *** - C:Jean Claude Van Damme, Roger Moore.
I was fully prepared to hate this film. I haven't liked any Van Damme movie in the past, so why would now be any different? And he directs the film as well. I figured that this would be like Steven Seagal's "On Deadly Ground", where an egomaniac was given too much control and wound up making a truly awful film. But, I found "The Quest" to be pleasantly entertaining, and worth an hour and thirty-five minutes of my life.
Van Damme isn't trying to do anything new with the kickboxing genre, and that's good because there really isn't anything new that CAN be done with it. He plays a pickpocket in the 1920s who, through a series of accidents, ends up in the "Lost City" somewhere in Asia fighting in a worldwide tournament to find out who is the world's best fighter. Along the way he meets up with Roger Moore, who plays an suave ex-British Navy man who has gone into business for himself, which includes pirating ships and stealing anything valuable that he can get his hands on.
Van Damme as a director surprised me. The film looks and feels completely authentic, and the fight scenes are well staged (he does use slow-motion just a bit too much however). Also, he doesn't make his character the star of the film. Whenever Moore is on screen, Moore is the center of the camera's attention as Van Damme just stands in the background listening to his every word. Also, his character doesn't even think he can win the tournament until late in the film, so he's not cocky and arrogant which would have easily become annoying.
"The Quest" is not a great film by any means. It's simple, it uses all the cliches of the genre and offers nothing really new. But it doesn't try to be anything different than that. It succeeds at what it wanted to succeed at, which was to be mildly entertaining. Roger Moore (who IMO was the best Bond) steals the film and I'm glad he did. He's fun to watch. Don't expect much from "The Quest", and you just might find yourself being entertained.
-- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,500 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, box office reports, film related links, and reader's polls and reviews.
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