Watch The Redemption: Kickboxer 5 For Free

Waste of time

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Brilliant and touching

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

THE REDEMPTION is the last of the KICKBOXER franchise. This fifth part was shot in South Africa and has little to do with the preceding films, given that the hero of those is killed off in the early scenes and Mark Dacascos is the newcomer hero.There aren't really many tournament scenes and indeed not really much of anything when it comes to the plotting. There's your routine villain responsible for various deaths and the like and the clean-cut hero who's busy trying to track him down and get revenge for various grievances. It's all very cheap-looking and the dull direction from Kristine Peterson doesn't really help much either.I always like Dacascos as a fighter and to be fair he isn't so bad here in the action stakes. There's still plenty of action and even if none of it particularly wows you, it's still fun to watch. However, THE REDEMPTION is let down by a very poor supporting cast, particularly the villain who isn't imposing in the least, and Geoff Meed is just as wooden as a supposed henchman who becomes something else as the story progresses. If you're a massive fan of '90s-era fight action you might get a kick or two out of this, but it really is barrel scraping stuff.

Fans of Kickboxer 2, don't seem to mind that a character so important to the original (and played by such a presence as Van Damme) was killed off so easily and cheaply. But I see a lot of them raising a stink over David Sloane getting killed off. Basically they told us to "get over" it and "accept" this little wimp as the new kickboxer. David Sloane was a little weakling with no muscle that had no place in these movies. In all the sequels he would becoming back as the lead and people would think him as the "kickboxer". I loathed him and couldn't stand that his character was now the star while Van Damme's character was dead. Now, finally he's killed off and good riddance.They put in Mark Dacascos who really should have been in the sequel. He's a real martial artist with a strong build, unlike Satcha Mitchell who's a skinny B-grade actor, with no physique. I was actually glad to see David Sloane die as I never felt he deserved to live off Kurt's success. Now the David Sloane fans feel like all the other movies were pointless as he was going to die anyway. Well that's how us Van Damme fans felt in the sequel. They felt it was still a good movie despite being without Van Damme, well we fell this is a good one despite no Satcha Mitchell. I hope you feel as angry and annoyed as we were now that David was killed off so easily and cheaply as Van Damme was in the sequel. So enjoy this movie, cause David Sloane is never coming back! Accept it and get used to it!

This was better than Kickboxer 4. However, what was disappointing was that David Sloan was killed off. His death is seen in the opening credits of the film. However, David has a best friend in Matt Reeves, played by the always fantastic Mark Dacascos. Mark collaborated with Burton Richardson on all the fights involving him. It was great to see James Ryan after the karate films Kill or be Killed and Kill and Kill Again this time as bad guy Negaal. What annoyed me though was Negaal's goons, Moon and Boller...they should've been dead from the beginning. It's easy to see why the filmmakers call it Kickboxer 5. A suggestion to the filmmakers: If you ever do Kickboxer 6, have Matt Reeves fight Tong Po in the ultimate battle for honor and revenge...not only for Matt, but for the Sloans as well.

As usual Dacascos displays some excellent moves and great style in the fight scenes. The choreography ain't half bad either. However, thats the only compliment I can come up with for this movie. The dialogue will have you cringing and the plot is extremely weak and full of holes.