A Life in Film #018: The Quest
Or: The Curious Adventures of JCVD, Part 1
Release Date: 4/26/1996
Weeks at Number One: 1
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here, and be sure to like and share the review if you enjoyed it!
I’m not being wistfully nostalgic when I say that they don’t make action stars like they used to. Once upon a time, we had larger than life, chiseled supermen whose filmographies were high on quantity, so-so on quality. We still have actors and actresses most well-known for their action movies, but the nature of Hollywood production now doesn’t allow for the same kind of dedication to the genre that we had a few decades ago.
Gal Gadot isn’t starring in three movies a year where she shoots guns, breaks bones, and spouts one-liners in various settings. Chris Hemsworth will mix it up and do some comedies. Keanu Reeves basically only does the action thing for one series now.
It wasn’t like this back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The economy of action movies was so diversified that the casting of them involved hierarchical considerations. We had action stars of varying degrees of success, specializing in different subgenres of action (sci-fi, military, martial arts, etc.) represented both at the cinema and at the video store.
The top tier of these stars were guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kurt Russell, and Sylvester Stallone. These were meaty musclemen who had legitimate critical and commercial success in the ‘80s that had the side effect of giving them a lot of pretty crap work in the subsequent years; Schwarzenegger started the ‘90s with cult classic Total Recall and ended the decade with the reviled End of Days. Still, this was a class of actor full of big draws who still live on as important pieces of general pop culture.
Beneath these legitimate stars was a tier of action heroes whose names carried weight for genre enthusiasts, but who never crossed over into the full mainstream for any significant period of time. The films of these men were often small budget and plentiful in number, prioritizing quality of action over quality of anything else. Before he was an annoying internet meme, Chuck Norris qualified for this segment of stars, alongside guys like Steven Seagal. Though these kinds of actors would occasionally have big hits, they aren’t quite as legendary as more credible actors like Sly Stallone.
In my opinion, there’s a true king of this second tier of ‘90s action stars. More than any of them, his mainstream success was the most unlikely, yet in terms of box office returns he was, for a very brief period, the king of the action box office. He’s a man who exudes charisma despite a lack of any acting ability. He’s a legitimate martial arts athlete who holds a fascination with the American Dream and, at the peak of his popularity, a particularly nasty cocaine habit. He’s the Muscles from Brussels.
He’s Jean-Claude Van Damme.
JCVD was never elected governor of a US state. He hasn’t had a late career prestige run, and he doesn’t really come to mind to most normal people when it comes to action stars. But make no mistake, Van Damme was, for a moment, a more than solid money maker at the weekend box office. Though he never made the absolute best films in the action genre, you usually could count on a JCVD film being at least a little entertaining thanks to him and his legitimately impressive physical abilities.
By 1996, the time had come for a change. Riding the peak of his commercial success and content no longer just being the lead, Van Damme made the ultimate move for complete creative control. He would no longer be at the directorial whims of some weakling who couldn’t even do a jumping spin kick. The powerful Belgian would take the wheel and direct himself through a scenario of his own creation. Surely, things could only continue to go up from here for JCVD as he embarked on this quest.
This week’s movie, The Quest, is an important step in the career of JCVD. You might think that’s because it’s his directorial debut, and you’d be partially right. Unfortunately though, The Quest also represents one of the last steps for the actor before he falls off the cliff of relevancy and becomes a relic of a bygone era. But we’ll get to that. Let’s look back at happier times first.
Jean-Claud Van Damme’s history begins in his native Belgium. If you can’t tell by his chiseled physique, the dude’s a freak athlete. Van Damme has a black belt in karate, is trained in kickboxing, and has won championships as a bodybuilder. On top of all that, he’s also a talented ballet dancer. This combination of martial arts knowledge, a great look, and impeccable body control gave JCVD all the unique tools necessary to make it as an action star. Confident in his future, Van Damme made the trip over to the U.S. in 1982 to make it in Hollywood. He was 22.
Success came slowly for Jean-Claude. A small part here or there over the years in the early to mid ‘80s, but nothing ever substantial. Finally, in 1988, JCVD impressed the right people over at Cannon Films, and he starred in their martial arts classic Bloodsport. “Based” on a “true” story (remember that for later), Van Damme plays top American soldier Frank Dux, who steals away to Hong Kong in order to take part in a secret fighting tournament to avenge his master. Though filmed on a wee budget of $1.5 million, the gritty action of Bloodsport struck a chord with audiences, and despite weak reviews it pulled in about $50 million at the box office.
Bloodsport really shouldn’t work. Its lead actor portrays an American soldier with a thick French accent, the supporting performances occasionally lean into racist caricature, and the paper thin plot is predicated on some of the most hilariously bad flashbacks I’ve ever seen in film. And yet, the fundamentals are just so solid. JCVD is the most charismatic actor who cannot act that you’ll ever see, and the film’s choreography and editing do a great job selling just how impressive his physical abilities are. The movie also really stretches its tiny budget in ways that count, with great set design and score to cover for otherwise low production values. It’s not a perfect movie, but I recommend Bloodsport if you like martial arts movies and haven’t already seen it [3/5].
The success of Bloodsport meant that Van Damme got to stay busy for the next few years. He made movie after movie, none of which reviewed all that well, but were successful enough to warrant a bigger and bigger budget for each subsequent production. Kickboxer was a bit of a Bloodsport retread [though it’s maybe a teensy bit better, it’s still a 3/5], Double Impact had him playing two characters in the same film, and Hard Target [3.5/5] gave JCVD the distinction of being the star of John Woo’s first American movie. These movies were all hits at the box office, even as the production budgets increased, but none of them could cross the line to being top of the charts for even a single weekend. Nevertheless, JCVD persisted.
Finally, in September of ‘94, he did it: Jean-Claude Van Damme starred in a movie that topped the box office for not one, but two whole weekends. Time Cop is scifi movie that alternates between ripping off The Terminator and Back to the Future as Van Damme’s character, a titular time cop, travels back and forth in the timeline to save his wife and clear his name of time crimes. I don’t particularly love this movie [2.5/5], but I know it has its fans. To date it’s Van Damme’s highest earning film ever, crossing the $100 million mark after combining both its domestic and international pull.
The boyhood dream had been realized. The Belgian had come to America with the dream of being a movie star, and dammit, here he was on top of Hollywood (for a couple of weeks, at least). Riding this crest of success, Van Damme signed a three picture deal with Universal valued in the tens of millions. The studio banked hard on the Belgian, ready to ride the wave of his success through the rest of the decade.
Blessedly for bad movie fans everywhere, the first of the pictures with Universal ended up being a legendarily terrible stinker. An adaptation of the popular fighting game series, 1994’s Street Fighter is a campy mess from beginning to end. With the exception of some truly excellent work from the late Raul Julia (this was his final role before sadly dying of cancer), almost nothing in Street Fighter is actually good. Jean-Claude himself, despite technically being the star, feels like he’s barely part of the film, which as a result ends up relying on a supporting cast that is far from ready for primetime. The result is mediocre action on cheap looking sets, the endeavor feeling more like the extended pilot for a Saturday morning Power Rangers rip off than a major holiday tentpole.
Street Fighter is near a total disaster. Is a lot of it ironically hilarious? Oh yeah, absolutely. [I give it 1.5/5, but I really recommend you check it out for your next bad movie night if you haven’t yet already]
Despite its obvious low quality, Street Fighter was another a big hit, nearly crossing the nine figure mark at the box office. The JCVD train rolled on. The second movie in that Universal deal, 1995’s Sudden Death, didn’t make as much money (it opened in 8th place the same weekend as Waiting to Exhale), but it still turned a profit. The next movie though, that one would be a massive deal. Not only would it be Van Damme’s most ambitious film to date, but the action star would be directing it himself using a story formulated from his own mind. Allegedly, anyway.
According to JCVD, he came up with the vision for his quest one day while enjoying a beer in a beachside town in Thailand. He saw some kids playing on the street and started to bring it all together with another top secret fighting tournament. And yet, if you actually watch The Quest, you’ll notice that the director/star shares a Story By credit with one Frank Dux.
Yes, as it turns out, Van Damme stayed close with Dux after portraying him in Bloodsport. If you’ll remember, I put a few quotation marks up where I was describing that movie’s plot. Despite Dux swearing for years that he was the ultimate secret fighting tournament champion, basically every part of his story is bullshit. He’s never been able to prove any of it, including the details of his military service. To this day he’s still spinning the yarn of his legendary martial arts career that no one can prove existed.
Pathological liars like Frank Dux don’t make for great witnesses on the stand, but boy can they come up with great stories. Van Damme, who seems to have a tenuous grasp on the truth himself, knew this. When the action star decided he wanted to direct his first movie, he knew exactly who to go to in order to find creative inspiration. So why did he say in interviews that he came up with the premise himself?
After the release of The Quest, Dux sued the director/star for $900,000 in damages. The alleged champion fighter claimed that he had actually written the script for The Quest (credited in the movie to Steven Klein & Paul Mones), and that Van Damme had not properly credited or compensated him. In the testimony that followed, Dux claimed that the two had come to an oral agreement in the early ‘90s to adapt Dux’s story. He testified that he had recorded this conversation onto tape, but had lost the tape during an earthquake. Van Damme, meanwhile, said he wanted “to spend [his] money on poor children.”
The judge ruled in favor of JCVD in 1998.
So what was the incredible story that Dux felt the need to go to court over? The Quest follows Christopher Dubois, a street kid with a good heart from New York City who ends up Shanghaied to Thailand in an effort to flee the NYPD. There, the already skilled fighter learns the art of Muay Thai and becomes a champion street fighter in Bangkok. With the help of a wealthy British sponsor (Roger Moore) and a champion American boxer (James Remar, who you may know as Dexter’s dad in Dexter), Du Bois travels to a secret martial arts tournament in the remote jungle to prove he is the greatest fighter in the world and get enough money to return home.
As I’ve said before in this column, if you get to watch an action movie with an even halfway decent narrative, you’ve hit the jackpot. And granted, the guiding plot of The Quest, though a bit all over the place, allows for some fun moments. The opening scene, in an effort to set up an underutilized framing device, shows JCVD in hilarious old man makeup. Immediately after, we flashback to him as a 1920’s street clown, busking on stilts. An hour later, he wears what appear to be jorts and timbs as he roundhouse kicks his way to martial arts victory.
This is a profoundly silly movie, but I don’t think Van Damme knows that. As you watch The Quest, it will slowly dawn on you that he’s serious about this. The Belgian wants to sell us on the immense gravitas and prestige of his directorial debut. The picture is full of sweeping vistas of deserts, jungles, beaches, and urban landscapes. The globe-trotting nature of the film and its honestly overwhelming orchestral score make its Indiana Jones sized aspirations clear, but at the core of those ambitions is yet another JCVD action movie where he (spoiler) wins a secret martial arts tournament.
Moore, Remar, and the rest of the supporting cast are fine, but they’re not the stars. And though the star of the show is as visually compelling as ever, he’s also as incapable of selling dialogue as ever. Normally, Van Damme’s incredible look and physical talent carry his performances, but there’s nothing particularly special about the martial arts exhibition that constitutes the bulk of his performance in The Quest. The best JCVD movies will fill his fight scenes with exciting exhibitions of his flexibility and physique: splits, jump kicks, a cheeky shot of his buns for the ladies, stuff like that.
But here it’s not like he’s even playing the hits. Van Damme’s fights in The Quest usually consist of the actor getting his ass kicked for a minute before he’s inspired to turn it around. A well-placed spin kick later and he’s the victor. His fights in particular lack the physical storytelling you see in the best action movies and pro wrestling matches. The dude has movies with far better action than The Quest; Hard Target in particular is a wild ride, thanks to John Woo helming things behind the camera.
The Quest fails to exhilarate, thanks in part to questionable filmmaking and editing choices that remove all of the thrill. Many of the fights are interspersed with far too many close ups of limbs blocking strikes in slow motion, and there’s a disconnecting effect between them and the wide shot of the actors who wind up before the camera cuts. Other random switches to slow motion also don’t do much to make me more invested in the fight scenes, save for one cool moment where a Brazilian capoeira fighter and a Chinese kung fu master dance in graceful pre-combat loops.
There is a certain fun in watching many different martial arts styles placed head-to-head, even in scripted encounters. This was the early days of UFC as a novelty, when the promotion still structured its Pay-Per-Views around single day tournaments pitting different disciplines against one another to find the default strongest. In channeling the ideal competitive form of that idea, its tournament arc is the best part of The Quest. Good, but with a boring final fight, and overall not so good as to justify half the movie serving as a setup to it.
But JCVD had been in so many martial arts movies up to this point in his career; how could he fail to properly capture the action in his own movie like this? Well, according to Roger Moore’s autobiography My Word is My Bond, the set for The Quest wasn’t exactly the most well organized. The shoot was constantly under budget and over schedule, with Van Damme doing very little to keep things straight. Crew were, in an attempted cost-cutting measure, even asked by Jean-Claude and producer Moshe Diamant to work for free. Speaking of Van Damme and Diamant, the third James Bond actor had this to say:
I only dislike, and I mean really dislike two people in this business. Both were involved with…The Quest, on either side of the camera.
It probably didn’t help that Van Damme was in a tough place, personally. According to Street Fighter director Steven de Souza, the Belgian had nursed a $10,000-a-week cocaine habit during the adaptation’s filming, which was very close in time to the making of The Quest. I’m not going to pretend that a lot of great art hasn’t been made at least partially under the influence of the powdered muse, but directing your first movie on location in Thailand with an estimated budget of $30 million is when you want to have a clear head. Instead, not only did Van Damme make a bad movie, but he made Roger Moore a hater for life.
So what are we left with after finishing The Quest? A Jean-Claud Van Damme movie that’s less exciting than Bloodsport or Hard Target, has a less compelling premise than Time Cop, and isn’t even as fun as Street Fighter. JCVD’s directorial debut is ambitious in its scope and production, but its failures don’t even feel like all time great combustions. The action star took a big swing and we didn’t even get a legendarily bad movie out of the attempt. Instead, The Quest is disappointingly mediocre.
The critics of 1996 didn’t find The Quest to be a journey worth taking. The film sits at 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviews bashing the film’s lackluster fight scenes and weak script. Joey O’Bryan put it best in his review for The Austin Chronicle:
Van Damme the director aims for old-fashioned high adventure, but, for the most part, winds up with schlock.
Van Damme was no stranger to bad reviews; The Quest was only two films after Street Fighter in his filmography. But if I’m covering the film in this column, surely that means audiences connected with it, right? Well, as one of the last dump month releases of early 1996, The Quest was able to win its release weekend thanks to a slight bit more mass appeal than The Truth About Cats and Dogs, an Uma Thurman rom-com that narrowly came in second.
But this was the fourth Jean-Claude Van Damme movie released in two years. The long-term box office pull of The Quest shows that people were getting tired of the man: the film only stuck around for two months and made $21 million domestically. This marked the third Van Damme movie in a row to not make its money back from the American box office.
The foreign market came in and saved the day, eventually pushing the total box office gross to about $51 million. But between the poor financial performance, public sentiment towards Van Damme waning, and what sounds like a terrible production experience, I’m not surprised Universal didn’t sign the actor on to another multi-picture deal.
The Quest marked the end of JCVD’s deal with the studio, but not the end of his run of movies in this column. Believe it or not, we’ll be covering the Belgian action star one more time before we’re done with covering 1996. For those of you who have never seen one of this man’s movies, I promise you they’re usually more fun than this. Go check out Bloodsport or Hard Target if you want a good movie, and be sure to suggest Street Fighter for your next bad movie night with friends.
As for The Quest, it’s an adventure you can safely leave in the past.
Rating: 2/5
Next Week: Okay okay, I know I promised last week that we’re finally back to talking about good movies. This time I actually mean it, and I couldn’t have timed it better. What better way to celebrate Spooky Season 2024 than by watching a 1996 movie about teen witches? Join me next week as we look at The Craft.
See you then!
-Will