*Sigh* Best of the Best 4: Without Warning. Y’know…when I started this franchise I was so bright eyed and hopeful. The first film was a decently made and interesting Team sports movie, it wasnt perfect, but it felt fresh, interesting, fun. The sequel drifted away from the sports theming somewhat, embracing a more martial arts/action drama vibe, but it still worked, it was still watchable!…I barely made it through Best of the best 3…

And so, we arrive at Best of the Best 4…a film that…well, to me its at least a BIT better than 3. But it seems to have swapped active irritation for…just, numbness.

So as a cards on the table moment here, I honestly don’t know how to feel about the script for this thing, the last film gave me strong feelings of gutteral hatred towards it, I was frustrated with it’s structure. It’s weird “power scaling” of Tommy, it’s choice to portray the racists the way they did, the whole thing felt annoying to me. This film? Its probably one of the most bland and generic scripts I’ve sat through in a LONG time. And the handful of moments that did invoke a feeling from me, were largely negative. I don’t know honestly whats worse, feeling a strong dislike towards something, or a peevish total non interest because of how bland and uninteresting the thing is.

Philip Rhee when interviewed about the film commented that he basically only took the job of writing and directing this picture because the Weinsteins offered him a TON of money to do it. And that in hindsight he regretted making this. I can honestly see why, What we have here is 90 minutes of flatly paced, rigidly 3 act structured, bland story telling that amounts basically to a runaround between Tommy and a group of Slavic gangsters trying to recover a microdisc. A dated plotline for 1990 let alone 1998, at that point this kind of story telling was positively ancient.

Tommys character here has been almost completely whittled away to nothing, he’s gone from being an emotional powerhouse, who’s nice until it’s time not to be nice with an underplayed charismatic streak, to being just an emotionless slab who only gets angry when the script remembers he has things to be angry about. At no point does it feel like he actually genuinely cares about the seriousness of the situation. The gangsters are also equally bland and generic with only Yuri, the little brother of the head of the operation getting ANYTHING resembling a character profile that isnt just “They’re nefarious Russian sorts.”

The script introduces plot points as if they’re going to be important and then never really addresses them. They give Tommy a dead wife who’s only function seemingly is to act as a mcguffin to force Tommy to bake a cake for his daughter (seriously.) They bring in a friendly shopkeeper who Tommys known for years, just to act a a mcguffin to get the microdisc to Tommy, then they kill both him AND his daughter off for literally no reason. At one point, Tommy gets “Drugged” by one of the agents working for the russians who Tommy *Thinks* is a good guy, they imply briefly some flirtation, maybe even the startings of a relationship, which got me thinking she may change sides in the 3rd act…but NOPE, they drug him (including a weird trippy drug scene which again, comes out of nowhere and doesnt add anything to the main plot) and then seemingly they forget they ever raised the romantic implications, just having her be a generic baddy for the rest of the movie.

That same woman is then also tied into a *hinted at* relationship with Yuri. Which is never really developed either beyond two scenes, one in which he *presumably* shags her in the traffic control room near the beginning of the film and one near the end of the film where she walks in on him having a threesome with some russian fluesies. Neither of which are elaborated on I might add…, and in the final act when she gets killed in one of the STUPIDEST ways i’ve seen in a movie like this for a while. Yuri gives not one fuck. It’s hard enough to get an audience to emotionally invest in your characters when you’re actually trying. It’s impossible to do that if you don’t even care what your characters think of each other.

The whole thing seems to swing violently between not knowing if it wants to be a gritty and serious action thriller, or whether to throw a bit of hammy OTTness in there, and it tries both and ends up achieving neither, it’s flashy, but the stupid moments undercut the gritty realness, it’s hammy, but the gratuitous gore (more on that later) means it cant really hit that sweetspot of silliness that these kind of films can do so well.

My personal biggest gripe is how they decide to end the movie (im spoiling this, I don’t care.)…with the baddies on a plane full of stolen money speeding down the runway, all but guarenteed to getaway, Tommy grabs the bomb with only 4 minutes on the clock, hops into a fire engine and speeds off down the runway after them. Not only is that fire engine able to OUTRUN a SPEEDING AEROPLANE on the midst of takeoff. But Tommy has enough time to speed past it by SUCH a magin, that he’s able to get out, get onto the fire engines cherry picker, extend the picker to it’s highest setting. AND have enough time to figure out the PRECISE strength, angle and height he’ll need to throw the bomb to get it to land inside a cavety where the planes landing gear is EXACTLY at the point that the baddies pull the landing gear up, and in just enough time for the bomb to go off JUST as they’re flying over a beach.

When that happened on my initial watch I literally verbally shouted “Oh FUCK OFF!” what an absolute load of bollocks this film tries to shove off onto its audience it’s honestly quite unbelievable. And frankly one of the worst endings to any of the films in this franchise. I mean, say what you will about Best of the best 3, at least the ending could have THEORETICALLY happened.

It’s not all bad, theres a decent bike chase scene in the 3rd act that impressed and had some decent explosions, theres a decent fight scene at the gangsters house where Tommy stumbles in on a group of the Slavics wounded henchmen recuperating from a previous Tommy attack, leading to an extended fight in which bandaged and poorly henchmen Tommy has already taken out, get beaten up again but this time with sticks. But outside of that…this things just a totally forgettable slog honestly.

Even the dialogue isnt all that interesting, theres no real quips, no memorable exchanges, anything notable here is really more in the delivery and what lines have been written are stilted, overly wordy and only really serve to try and push the film to 90 minutes rather than giving the plot any kind of meaningful progression or bounce.. It’s just such a dull experience to make it through. 90% of the movie is Tommy wandering around a city calling people, and the rest is the Russians sending people after Tommy, who takes them out with no effort. Thats literally the whole movie, barring the fucking plane bollocks.

On the Direction front, it’s professional. It looks like how a studio grade movie should look. and thats. It. and it barely manages to achieve that. I cannot stress how little interest it seems Rhee had here in delivering anything other than the bare minimum. yes , it does look better than a lot of the lower end offerings of this decade, yes, its still very impressive to be able to successfully pull together all of the elements that make a studio grade movie look and work to the standard they look and work as. But it never breaks above that, it never aims to be any better than “it’s good enough that the studio can put it out legitimately without having to hush it away”

Now, some nice things that come with a slightly higher budget and studio backing is that the stunt sequences are a lot higher quality than previous entries, as mentioned theres a bike chase scene that gets pretty explosive and immersive that I quite enjoyed, and because they have more money to play with, it also means that the film can afford to be more gratuitous than previous entries. Which means in this film you get to see people get shot in the head in all it’s explosive pulpy gory glory and people get their arms broken by bending them in directions they’re not supposed to bend in, which again, did catch the eye and DID give the impression that the film was working with a bit more money than it was previously used to.

The problem? Is that those kind of gore shots wern’t really in tone with the other best of the best movies that have never really “gone” there before. Couple that with the fact that those kind of shots only happen a couple of times across the whole runtime and you end up with something that does feel out of place and tone with not only this movie, but the rest of the series. I mean, this is a film where in a 10 minute window, Tommy has a heart to heart with his 5 year old daughter about how they’re going to make a birthday cake together and have an awesome birthday party which then breaks into clowning around shenanigans, only THEN, 5 minutes later, to cut to a cop having the inside of his skull examined by a shotgun blast. It’s just. a bit tonally uneven.

Even the fight choreography isnt all that great here, we’ve gone from slow motion close ups of sweaty men trying to prove they’re the best of the best, to just, ultra generic masked shot fights with little to no soft contact connections and a lazy edit job to hide the hits and kicks even more. Almost no efforts gone into the choreography, theres maybe 2 fight scenes in the whole film that are even vaguely worth paying attention to, and even they’re just passable. I dunno, its just, kind of sad to see someone who’s so passionate about martial arts as a medium half arse the emotive draw these fights can have just to get it done and in the can.

On the plus side, one thing I can say is Phillips handling of direction of the cast is ever improving, here cast members use props, move around the set space utilising it well and they seem to have worked closely with Phillip to get their deliveries down. Their performances may vary, but at least how they deliver their lines is solid. So thats something I guess…

For me? The cines fine. Just about, composition is solid, theres a good variety of shots making up sequences and the edits are actually pretty tight on some of the more action oriented chase scenes with good utilisation of the footage shot. I kind of liked it and thought they even handled some of the effects shots pretty nicely. It’s not great, in fact it’s just kind of “Unremarkably” acceptable. In fact, the only thing I kind of didnt like so much about this one was the lighting choices, which just seemed a little…off.

Nothings particularly underlit, they just do some weird stuff with the lighting, like coloured gels in Tommys apartment, a total lack of controlled lighting on location scenes, which just leaves things looking a bit washed out and bland. There’s chiaroscuro implemented in places that don’t really need it, and in places that really WOULD have benefitted from chiaroscuro they just went for flat lighting that doesn’t really do anything other than show our cast moving about. Its a real shame honestly because I think the cine is probably this films strongest element, and they’ve kind of fumbled it a bit in the one place that could have taken it from good, to great.

Performance wise, their are two noteworthy performances here, one is Earnie Hudson playing Detective Gresko, a role that absolutely caught me off guard because, Hudsons largely known for playful, charismatic and sarcastic roles but here, he’s playing out of type as an abrasive, aggressive and no nonsense detective who’s a bit of a dick to everyone he comes into contact with, and over the course of the film as he falls into the circumstances that play out, he softens up, ending the film in a more typical role. I loved him in this and find it astounding that noone else has given him roles like this since, because I think he absolutely aces the part and genuinely brings some of the best moments of the film to the surface with his portrayal. He’s fab.

The other is Thure Riefenstein as Yuri Slava, who brings a MORE than unhinged menace to proceedings and arguably has some of the best screentime in this thing. Hes animated, grandiose, a little bit hamtastic, think Boris in Goldeneye and your not a million miles from home. He puts 50 thousand volts up this production like you wouldnt believe, it’d honestly be a poorer offering without him.

The rest of the cast are on autopilot, with Rhee himself as Tommy bringing a VERY disappointing turn to proceedings, he struggles through the script, gives almost non of the energy or passion he did in previous entries and at times gives readings that feel like he’s barely even remembered his own script. It was very underwhelming, and while the supporting cast members bring just about acceptable performances to the table, they’re so underwritten and lacking character development, that you might as well have 6-10 balloons with faces scribbled on for all the interest they actually PUT into the role, it’s terribly disappointing honestly…

And finally; The Soundtrack. Its nothing special, thats probably about all I can say on it honestly, its stocky, generic 90s action movie fodder, if you’ve seen pretty much ANY action movie 1989 to 2001, you’ve heard tracks similar to whats presented here. And it only goes to further punctuate the total “BLEH” that this film is. GOD I wish I’d brought booze with me for this review…

Best of the Best 4 was released in the UK as a big box rental tape in 1998 and was distributed by CIC on behalf of Paramount. It received a DVD release in 2008 courtesy of 4Digital media before finally getting the bluray treatment in 2016 by 4digital as well, though it didnt end up getting a solo release (for obvious reasons) so…the only way of owning a HD release of this is by buying “The complete Best of the Best Boxset” compiling all 4 films together…which…now i’ve seen them all, ima take a rain check there. Picture quality is decent enough, they’ve remastered it rather solidly. Though extras are a little thin on the ground. Still…it’s best of the best 4…what do you expect!?

In summary, UGGGHHHHH. Its SO by the numbers its painful, if you’ve gotten to a point in your life where your watching “Best of the best 4” as a means of escapism and you think thats acceptable? I’d maybe go reach out to a neighbour or local librarian. Im sure they’ll be able to get you the help you need.

And with that! We’ve finally put to rest, Best of the Best and answered the age old question, was this franchise the best of the best…no. No it bloody well wasnt…Till next time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/best-of-the-best-4-without-warning/1/