Kickboxer 2: The Road Back

MOVIE #1,824 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.18.24 ALBERT & AKERMAN: AN AUTEURIST STUDY IN CONTRAST + CONTINUUM I hope you enjoyed that bonus chapter on the original Kickboxer. JCVD did not want to team up with Pyun again after their Cyborg collaboration — I’m guessing this is the only reason he bailed on the franchise, please don’t fact-check that — so we get a shockingly straightforward, continued storyline: another brother, portrayed by Sasha Mitchell, runs a kickboxing gym for underprivileged youth, after we learn that the both JCVD and paralyzed big bro Dennis Alexio died were murdered by Kickboxer 1’s bad guy, Tong "The Tiger" Po (Michel Qissi — the Mr. Miyagi surrogate Dennis Chan is the other returning actor). It was driving me nuts where I recognized Mitchell from and it turns out it was from the 1990s sitcom Step by Step which was a staple in my house growing up.

Another classic 90s guy, Brian Austin Green opens the action, and Peter Boyle — mostly phoning in it — is second billed as a quasi-villain. It also co-stars the guy who played Donald Trump’s father in the 2022 period piece, Armageddon Time.


The in-ring fighting scenes look a lot better under Pyun's eye: better lighting, better camera movement. These will never be my bag but it still counts for action and Pyun knows how to shoot action. Although, overall, the film is pretty light on action, as there’s only a handful of fight scenes in these 89 minutes.

In a flashback, we see that Po (dishonorably) killed JCVD with a gun and I was thinking this couldn’t possibly be JCVD in an uncredited, wordless cameo but it does look like him?...


This does really play more like a drama than a fighting/sports movie and while some of it is pure schmaltz — the heartfelt moment on the beach doesn’t work — it’s mostly engaging and Mitchell is a surprisingly strong lead. It’s a nice-looking, totally watchable movie and I don’t have much more to add. Pyun loves these Venetian blind / spinning fan type shadows…

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Kickboxer 2 (stylized on-screen as Kickboxer 2: The Road Back) is a 1991 American martial arts film directed by Albert Pyun and written by David S. Goyer. The film is the second entry into the Kickboxer film series, and stars Sasha Mitchell in the role of David Sloan (unlike Sloane in the first film), the brother of Kickboxer's lead character Kurt, portrayed by Jean-Claude Van Damme. Former world kickboxing champion Dennis Alexio is also featured. It spawned several sequels. It was released on June 13, 1991.