The Quest

A Review

by Mighty Doom

            As a film enthusiast (read: ex-college student with too much time on his hands) I’ve probably watched well over a thousand movies at one point or another.  Some have been watchable.  Others have starred Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Very rarely do these two attributes intersect.  If you want horrible, grotesque and generally evil displays of martial prowess, there’s Jet Li.  If you want slapstick antics in the vein of Gene Kelly, there’s Jackie Chan.  Yet even a mighty monarch like Doctor Doom does a double-take when he sees a movie that features Jean-Claude Van Damme as a goodhearted 1920s street mime who fights for the homeless children of New York.

            If Van Damme didn’t take himself so damned seriously, I would have thought The Quest was a joke.  It’s like hearing someone imitate the dialogue and exaggerate the voices from a bad movie – but in this case it’s actually in the movie.  Our story begins with Chris DuBois, martial artist, mime, hero to poor children everywhere, stowing away on an eastbound ship.  He’s discovered, locked in the galley and subsequently rescued by a pompous twit named Edgar Dobbs and played by, in a shocking change of character, Roger Moore.  Upon arrival in Bangkok, Dobbs sells DuBois to his friend Carl and goes on his merry way.  He returns some time later to find DuBois a lethal Mue Tai fighter.  (That’s Mue Tai as in “Next, on Street Fighter II V: “Appearance of the Secret Technique – the fighting Mue Tai assassin!” Gonna burn some muscle!”)

            It seems DuBois has set his sights on a golden dragon given to the winner of a secret martial arts tournament held in a lost city called The Lost City, which everyone seems to know about, because people live there and know how to get there, making its status as “lost” questionable.  Along with Dobbs, his henchman Harry and a disposable female reporter (we know she’s not from the 1920s because her breasts aren’t shaped like Christmas trees), DuBois makes his way to The Lost City, where he meets his lifelong idol, goofily American boxer Maxie Devine, who gives DuBois his own invitation so he can enter the tournament and win the golden dragon.

            Before watching The Quest, I had no idea martial arts were assigned based solely on the race of the practitioner.  For instance, the Spanish fighter in the tournament uses the Matador Style, which he uses to great effect against the Soviet Union’s champion, who uses the Zangief Style.  The Mongolians particularly enjoy a martial arts style that involves going into a restaurant, shouting incoherently and smashing tables.  They also wear fur hats and coats, because that’s what Mongolians do.

            The Chinese fighter has to be the most amusing thing in the entire movie – not because of his martial arts, predictably enough the five animal styles we’ve seen in five million other kung fu movies, but because of the commentary from the sidelines.  The well-spoken Maxie Devine exclaims, “He’s moving like a animal!” to which Dobbs answers, “More like a snake.” I want to buy this movie on DVD so I can watch that part over and over again, because I swear I laugh my ass off every time I see it.  Later in the fight, when the howling martial artist switches styles, Maxie says, “Now he’s got a style like a monkey!” And of course, Shad’s personal favorite, “The tiger!” Indeed, our boy DuBois seems outclassed and outmatched – at least until Maxie, in true Pace Salsa tradition, yells “NEW YORK CITY!” No, I’m not kidding.

            That’s really what makes this movie so damned entertaining.  The dialogue is so stunningly bad that it’s never, ever boring.  Even the bit players overact like Gary Oldman on caffeine pills.  Combine this with ridiculous martial arts styles, including the Brazilian “freaking the hell out” style and the Korean “kicking yourself in the fucking head” style, and you have a winner.  Or at least a loser that’s a lot of fun to watch and later mock ruthlessly with your friends over a forty-ounce of malt liquor and a game of Worms: Armageddon.  And remember, folks, Doom says don’t wear a kilt when fighting.