Jean-Claude Van Damme gets a bad rap. Due to when he got famous and the sorts of movies that he usually makes, JCVD often gets lumped in with other B-tier ’80s action stars like Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris, which does Van Damme a disservice.
If you go back and watch the ’80s action movies that made all three men famous, you’ll likely notice the difference. Seagal and Norris both wade through most of their movies (Executive Decision notwithstanding) like they’re playing a video game with all the cheats enabled. Their characters rarely get wounded, have a moment’s doubt about their current course of action, or even take a punch. To their credit, both Seagal and Norris made at least one genuinely good movie in their careers (Under Siege, Lone Wolf McQuade, technically The Way of the Dragon), but they both consistently played stoic invincible guys.
Van Damme, conversely, played more fallible protagonists, put up against more dangerous opposition. Van Damme’s characters make mistakes (Double Team, Double Impact), get horribly beaten (Cyborg, Kickboxer), suffer serious losses along the way (Timecop), or just look like morons half the time (Universal Soldier, his action mullet in Hard Target). Even when Van Damme’s acting isn’t quite up to the task at hand (and y’know, you try putting on a performance in your second language), it’s easier to root for him because it’s easier to believe he’s in danger.
1988’s Bloodsport isn’t Van Damme’s first film, but it is the movie that put him on the cinematic map. More importantly, it provided a blueprint for both Van Damme’s career and mid-budget action movies that would last for decades. If you’ve ever enjoyed a film in which one guy spin-kicks another guy, it’s worth taking 92 minutes to watch Bloodsport, which is a genuine classic in the genre. It’s currently free with ads on YouTube.
We fight to survive
By now, the story behind Bloodsport might be slightly more famous than the film. Bloodsport’s screenplay is based on “Kumite: A Learning Experience,” an article by John Stewart from the Nov. 1980 issue of Black Belt magazine. In the article, American martial artist Frank Dux tells the story of an underground fighting tournament in Nassau that he won in 1975.
Frank Dux, it should be said, is the sort of character that the United States simply cannot produce anymore. Before the advent of the internet and its capacity for instant fact-checking, Dux was somehow able to convince a large part of the English-speaking world that he was a generational badass.
Dux is a martial artist who, in addition to his alleged Kumite win, claims to have secretly earned a Medal of Honor by performing covert missions for the CIA in Southeast Asia. According to anyone who’s in a position to verify Dux’s story, most of it is a truly extravagant lie, including the existence of the Kumite tournament. In Dux’s defense, however, at least we got Bloodsport out of him before his whole story fell apart.
In Bloodsport, Dux (Van Damme) is a captain in the U.S. Army. When he receives an invitation to the Kumite, an underground martial-arts tournament in Hong Kong, Dux goes AWOL in order to attend. He’s there to represent his old master’s school of martial arts, as well as fulfill the lifelong dream of his late childhood friend.
The Kumite attracts fighters from all over the world to fight for thrills and glory. Dozens attend despite the risk that they might die in the ring, especially if they face the reigning champion Chong Li (Bolo Yeung, who played the villain in a couple of dozen Shaw Brothers movies).
In order to compete in the Kumite, Dux has to dodge the MPs who’re out to arrest him (one of whom is played by a young Forest Whitaker), as well as a reporter (Leah Ayres) who wants to tell the story of the Kumite.
There’s an odd purity to Bloodsport. It might be the last big movie about a martial-arts tournament where all the major characters’ primary motivation is simply winning the tournament. Dux has some emotional stakes in the competition, but they’re primarily there to get him in the door and keep him moving forward. There is no criminal conspiracy behind the Kumite, aside from its existence, and Dux has no personal enmity towards anyone in the tournament. He’s there to fight whoever’s in the ring, full stop.
Once the Kumite gets underway, Bloodsport turns into its own YouTube highlight reel. It’s a procession of fast, bloody brawls between martial artists from every style under the sun, from old-fashioned street brawlers to sumo wrestlers to capoeiristas. If you don’t like a fight scene, wait 45 seconds for the next one. It’s a straightforward celebration of cinematic combat, co-choreographed by the real Frank Dux.
The irony of Bloodsport in 2026 is that it’s arguably a better Street Fighter movie than either of the actual live-action Street Fighter movies, including the one that just came out. It’s simply about putting as many different kinds of martial artists as possible into the same room, including a guy played by Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds whose combat style appears to be “high pain tolerance,” and letting them fight like cats in a sack.
Bloodsport went on to inspire the project that eventually became the original Mortal Kombat, but it’s also difficult to not see multiple nods to it in Street Fighter II. As such, it’s not a stretch to say that Bloodsport’s success is partially responsible for fighting games’ existence as a genre.
On its own merits, though, it’s easy to see why Bloodsport is a classic. It’s got numerous and specific flaws, but it’s still a nearly perfect action movie that still holds up today, even if you’ve watched a hundred of its descendants. Check it out.
Bloodsport is currently streaming for free on YouTube.