As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Blistering performances.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Together with his trainer Xian, Kickboxer champion David Sloan arrives in Rio de Janeiro for a show fight. Soon he's confronted with the darker sides of the city, when pocket picker Costa tries to steal his camera. He takes him and his beautiful sister Isabella under his wings and to his fight. There Isabella gains the attention of a ruthless white-slave agent, who happens to be his opponent Martin's manager. Not long until David needs to use his fighting skill also outside the ring. If you though that Kickboxer 2 wasn't bad enough get ready because Kickboxer 3 is even worse they even try to take the fight outside of the ring and it fails so badly and David is a pretty uninteresting character i actually fell asleep at this movie it was just awful.

Kickboxer 3: The Art of War (1992)Trades Martial Violence for Mindless GoreIt's not fair to call Kickboxer 3: The Art of War a bad movie, even it is by most measures a very bad movie. It's not meant to be a good movie. It's meant to show off a little kickboxing and a little raw physicality, spiced up with moral justice vigilante style, and fully enhanced with lots and lots of dead people.At first we are on the side of this seemingly peaceable, obviously buff athlete of a dude visiting Rio. He presents himself as above the cheap tricks and meanness of his rough Third World hosts. But when it comes to beating the Third World thugs and their nasty ring of enslaved sex girls, he gets down and dirty--not with kicks and strategy, but with lots of guns, and good old shoot-em-up gore. It's awful, and not very well sequenced. Even a movie like this could give a sense that he would, in fact, not get shot at dozen times first. But he has the protective halo of bad directing by Rick King.Sasha Mitchell as the Kickboxer is what you expect. Though showing no acting genius, it's not his fault the movie struggles around him. How do all these people take such sensational raw material and make it actually a bore? Ha.

Sasha Mitchell reprises his role as David Sloan who has since # 2 become a bona-fide kickboxing champion who flies to Rio to compete to defend his championship however along the way he decides to take down a prostitution racket and does so without hardly breaking a sweat. Did I give away too much by the last sentence? Well let's just say that this predictable sequel is a marginal improvement over # 2. This time there is more attractive scenery, more action and more plot than # 2, which was irritatingly straight forward.) That being said the movie is still hugely flawed. The main problem dealing with the fact that K3 has little kickboxing. Indeed the fight sequence at the end as well as the opponent could've easily been written out and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Mitchell and Chan rely on more guns and while this element works for action fans, the lack of training montage and fights make this a tepid effort.* * out of 4-(Fair)

I'm taking it from viewing Kickboxer 3 that the filmmakers are running out of ideas. Sasha Mitchell returns as kickboxer David Sloan, who goes to Rio with mentor and gym partner Xian Chow (played again by the wonderfully talented Dennis Chan in sadly his last American film) to compete in a match versus the deadly Eric Martine, played with some mancing velocity by kickboxer Ian Jacklin. Martine's manager Frank (Rich Comar) also runs a teen prostitution ring. Yeah, definitely diminishing. This film is a decent entry in the series and Sasha gets to do his kickboxing here, but the plot of the crime ring...yeah, too much.