Best of the Best

Directed by Bob Radler, Best of the Best follows a team of American martial artists, led by Eric Roberts’ Alex, as they travel to South Korea for a Tae Kwon Do tournament. Filmmaker Radler, working from Paul Levine’s screenplay, delivers a watchable yet entirely forgettable drama that does, at least, benefit from the strong, personable work of its various actors, as the movie’s stars, for the most part, manage to transform their one-dimensional figures into relatively interesting and sympathetic heroes – with Roberts’ scenery-chewing (yet admittedly compelling) turn as the earnest Alex matched by an impressively strong supporting cast that boasts James Earl Jones, Sally Kirkland, and Chris Penn. (The latter is especially entertaining as the aforementioned team’s volatile hothead.) The movie’s midsection, which seems to consist mostly of training sequences and montages, slowly-but-surely drains the viewer’s attention to a fairly palpable degree, although, by that same token, the inclusion of a few appreciatively less-than-subtle subplots goes a long way towards compensating for the hit-and-miss vibe. (It’s difficult, for example, not to get a kick out of the reveal that one of the fighters will be going up against the man who killed his brother during a similar tournament years earlier.) By the time the hit-and-miss (and distinctly padded-out) climax rolls around, Best of the Best has cemented its place as a terminally erratic endeavor that rarely makes the visceral impact for which Radler is clearly striving.

** out of ****