If real-life karate tournaments were anything like they are portrayed in Best of the Best (which is closer to Blood Sport than to Karate Kid), they would be a lot more entertaining — and a lot dumber. Either way, I would love to see the World Karate Championship decided by who breaks the most bricks.
I say ‘karate’ because the movie is about a “US National Karate Team” put together by “the US Karate Federation,” but before it’s all said and done the filmmakers will have thrown tae kwon do, judo, and kickboxing into the mix (this was a couple of years before the term ‘mixed martial arts’ was coined).
The Federation holds tryouts to select “five young men who will represent the United States of America in competition against Team [South] Korea.” The two highest-profile members of the team are played by Eric Roberts and Chris Penn, who I’ve no doubt are, or rather, were pretty tough guys; that notwithstanding, no one was ever going to confuse them with a pair of accomplished karate-ka.
Fortunately, the laxity of the sport as it is (mis)understood by the film allows them to make do with a mostly brawling fighting style — especially Travis Brickley (Penn), who during the tryouts bows to an opponent and then kicks him in the face when the opponent bows back. What a dick. He nonetheless makes the team because, according to Coach Frank Couzo (James Earl Jones, who certainly had the authority if not the physical prowess for the job), “he’s a fighter” (but then so is everybody who was invited to try out) and “we can fix” whatever’s wrong with him (other than his Taxi Driver-inspired name, that is).
Miscasting aside, Best of the Best is as formulaic as they come (even by late 80s standards). The night before training camp begins, the guys go to a bar in a scene that seems to have been written merely so that there could be bar fight. During the melee, Couzo walks into the bar (but how did he know which bar? Is that the only watering hole in town? Or did Coach go on a pub crawl looking for his boys?), rounds up the team, and they all leave without settling their tab, let alone paying for the damages.
Do the guys get chewed out for risking injury on the eve of their three-month retreat? If they do, it takes place offscreen; it’s almost as if the incident never even happened. Like Syd Field wrote, the purpose of a scene is to either move the story forward or reveal information about the characters. This one does neither (we already knew, for instance, that Travis was a loose cannon), and thus it didn’t belong in the finished screenplay.
In addition to obligatory barroom shenanigans, we have a Job archetype in Alex Grady (Roberts). Before the film even starts he has already lost a wife and suffered a (not quite) career-ending injury; during the movie proper, his five-year-old son is run over by a car (offscreen), breaking his leg and putting him in a brief coma. You better believe that Coach Couzo, his heart having grown three sizes, has the kid flown all the way to Korea so that he can watch his daddy reinjure his surgically-repaired shoulder (which up to that point hadn’t given him any trouble).
Even closer to the heart of the chop-socky genre is Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee), the team’s breakout star (if only because Rhee, presumably a Motley Crue fan, is the only one of Asian descent, as well as a co-scriptwriter). The Americans get to pick and choose who’s going to fight go without any apparent input from the Koreans, and Tommy is tasked with facing the nefarious Dae Han, the man who killed Tommy’s brother “in a tournament just like this one.” Dae Han (paradoxically played by Rhee’s real-life brother Simon) wears an eye-patch, he’s so evil. You’d think having no depth perception would render him less effective in combat, but I guess you’d be wrong.
When it comes down to it, though, the Koreans are not as bad as the screenplay had misled us to believe; on the other hand, they’re every bit as obtuse as their American counterparts — perhaps even more so. In the decisive final match, Tommy literally beats Dae Han within an inch of his life; however, right when Tommy is about to seal the deal, “the American will not finish him off” — the implication being that if Tommy were to attack, he would “finish” Dae Han in the Mortal Kombat sense of the word.
Thus, Couzo shakes his head and Tommy allows the clock to run out, winning the match but losing the tournament (“a team competition where total points rather than individual match scores decide the overall winner”) for his teammates; it’s okay, though, since they also pleaded with Tommy to ‘spare’ Dae Han’s life (yep, even Travis).
This is fucking retarded. First of all, it’s not a fight to the death; Tommy only needs a knockout to earn the six points required to win the tourney. Are we really expected to believe that, after three months of training with special emphasis on discipline (“No women, no alcohol, no drugs. You will eat, sleep, and shit competition”), Tommy still doesn’t know his own fucking strength?
Second, Couzo spends the entire movie bitching Tommy out for “holding back,” only to ask him to show some restraint at the very climax — even though both the coaching staff and the team members had earlier taken it as a matter of course that “many fighters have died in the ring from such blows.” Third, one the first things that Couzo stressed to the guys was the importance of teamwork: “A team is not a team if you don’t give a damn about one another” — but in the end, they’re supposed to care more about the opposing team; it’s a good thing, then, that the feeling is mutual.
Not to be out-dumbed, the Koreans take off their gold medals and place them around the necks of their newfound American BFFs. This is stupid any way you slice it, but the real problem is that it’s only until now that we’re allowed to catch a glimpse of humanity in those who up to this point were for all intents and purposes the antagonists.
We’re told that “the Koreans train 12 months a year” — nonstop, it would appear; whenever the film deigns to show what they’re up to, the Koreans are always engaged in some sort of grueling, heart-hardening exercise. Moreover, only Dae Han has any lines, which he saves until the end and delivers in English; unsurprisingly, he only opens his mouth to sing the Americans’ praises. I wonder if the Korean government will continue to provide their national karate team with “full financial support” when they find out about that whole medal giveaway business.
As far as I can discern, the lesson of Best of the Best was that America always wins — even when it loses. Now, if only the Viet Cong had been as gracious to the U.S. Army about a decade and half before.
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