Best of the Best is a martial arts sports drama from 1989, a precious era when many of us still believed taekwondo could kill an adult man. Before we grew up and realized the true purpose of taekwondo is using your feet to stylishly slap styrofoam out of your dungeon master’s hands.
Best of the Best is the perfect film for someone who believes in the magic of a good foot slap. It’s an underdog tale about a ragtag team of American martial artists training to face the final boss of taekwondo, Team Korea. As a single entry, it’s a solid encapsulation of the genre and the period. But for whatever reason, the film’s writer, producer, and star, Phillip Rhee, decided to make sequels, each moving further from what most of us would call realism and sanity. The continuity is so inconsistent, the only way the sequels could possibly exist in the same universe is if they were fabrications of the main character’s imagination. But I’m getting too far ahead. Let’s start at the beginning.
Rhee plays Tommy Lee, a taekwondo instructor who needs to reconcile the childhood trauma caused by his older brother’s death during a tournament. His brother’s killer, Dae Han, who legitimately seemed to enjoy the accidental murder, is slated to be Tommy’s opponent in the climactic competition. Tommy’s big dilemma is not fear of Dae Han himself, which would be understandable since he’s an unrepentant sports murderer who trains by kicking bundles of baseball bats into splinters…
… no, Tommy is afraid he will be unable to resist revenge killing Dae Han. We are explicitly shown how his unresolved anger and spinning back kick are powerful enough to generate death revenge force.
Throughout his journey, Tommy must learn to use just enough of his lethal taekwondo to win the competition without killing his hated nemesis, thus winning the gold while retaining his humanity. Being way too dangerous with karate was a pretty standard weakness for a hero in the ’80s.
Representing the rest of the team is Sonny Grasso, Virgil Keller, Travis Brickley, and Alex Grady. Sonny and Virgil are a perfect cocktail of worthless and forgettable. They exist for a single purpose– losing badly enough to their Korean opponents in order to firmly establish an under for the dawgs. Travis might be the most complex character in the entire series. He’s a chubby, racist karate cowboy from Miami. He is an unapologetic asshole and he’s only here to do two things, kick ass and steal your girlfriend, and you’re all out of girlfriend because Travis just tricked you into punching her in the face.
Alex Grady is the co-main character. He’s a long in the tooth competitor with a well-known recurring shoulder injury. His special talents include having a son too stupid to turn your back on, and crying beyond the limits of human hydration. It can’t be understated how wet Alex’s face is the entire film. It’s so distracting, the international taekwondo federation should have banned his tears from competition.
They are coached by Frank Couzo, played by famous martial artist James Earl Jones. As the coach of the team Tommy’s brother was on, Couzo is fighting his own demons. He does this by nonchalantly picking Tommy to fight Dae Han without telling any of the other fighters or coaching staff about their shared history and… I guess hoping Tommy doesn’t say anything? It’s not entirely clear what Couzo’s motivations are. He seems regretful about what happened to Tommy’s brother, but at the same time he becomes enraged when Tommy’s emotional issues keep him from unleashing his full killing potential. Couzo is hard on them because he is keenly aware of Team Korea’s killing potential, but it also seems like Couzo would be low key alright if Tommy killed Dae Han.
Through modern equipment and training methods, the Americans eventually get it together and become friends. The South Koreans train in nature, through rain, sleet, and snow. They punch frozen trees, do knuckle push ups on the stone steps of ancient temples and meditate under freezing cold waterfalls. If you’re a true martial artist, this is what you picture when you’re trying to climax.
The tournament is upon us and Sonny and Virgil are up first. They lose as badly as characters you already forgot about should, so out of the gate, the Americans are insanely behind. Travis is next. Karate friendship eliminated his racism, another classic ’80s hero arc, and his new woke karate only earns him a tie. He does gain a little momentum after playfully calling his opponent “kim chi”, so the film may be implying racism makes him stronger.
They must break bricks for the tie breaker, and since bricks aren’t a race, Travis loses. Alex is next, and he karates the absolute shit out of his opponent. At least until his opponent remembers the worst kept secret in competitive martial arts and axe kicks Alex’s shoulder. It should be noted here how devastating this kick was. His arm is so mangled Alex can’t even stand on his own. He needs help hobbling off the mats and even then he keeps plopping back onto his ass like a marionette getting its strings clipped. It’s embarrassingly over the top and the reason why is obvious. It makes Alex cry. A lot. This is how he enters his final form. After his coaches tape him up and calm him down, he steps back onto the mat with his face positively glistening. He literally kicks his opponent off the platform and wins his match, then gets carried off by his team to hopefully have his threat level assessed.
Move that fucking wet monster into containment.
Okay, at last, Tommy Lee vs. Dae Han. In no uncertain terms, this fight is fucking awesome. Say what you want about taekwondo, and I will, but this is a dynamic display of premium foot slapping. They are scoring all over each other, during which Dae Han continuously taunts Tommy as if to say “Yes, I killed your brother, and it still gives me a chuckle to think about your mom throwing herself onto his shattered, lifeless body”. Then he intentionally kicks Tommy in the balls. Regardless of where your media literacy is at, it doesn’t feel like anyone would mistake Dae Han for a good dude based on what we’ve seen so far. This lights a fire under Tommy’s ass and he goes on to try every kick in existence. I take back what I said. This sequence might actually kill someone:
By the end of the ass kicking, a fresh breeze would topple Dae Han and an American victory would be assured. With seconds left on the clock, Tommy decides to plant his feet and set himself up for the murder kick he used during training. His coach and teammates notice and vocally protest, but Tommy is now locked in a trauma spiral. All he sees when he looks at Dae Han is his dead brother and his grief stricken mother. The clock is ticking and Tommy only has seconds to decide if he wants victory or revenge. Ultimately, Tommy’s trauma paralyzes him into doing nothing. The clock runs out and Dae Han falls flat on his face. Tommy, still frozen in his kill stance, can only stare as defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory. Afterward, during the award ceremony, a nearly crippled Dae Han hobbles over to Tommy, expresses his deepest regrets for what happened to his brother, admiration for the great honor Tommy showed in not murdering him and then gifts Tommy with his medal. This inspires the rest of team Korea to likewise hand their medals over to their American counterparts, even the dogshit ones and the racist ones. It’s a beautiful moment of tearful closure and a fairly satisfying if not bittersweet ending to a competent sports drama.
Then the sequels came along and did to world building what Tommy should have done to Dae Han: spin kicked it to fucking death.
You see, by sparing Dae Han, Tommy not only let himself down, but his team and America. Ever since then, he’s been living in a delusional fantasy world, playing out scenarios where logic is the first thing to die. All that matters is dispensing taekwondo justice to evildoers in a world where Tommy is truly the best of the best.
Tommy Lee, together with Alex Grady and Travis Brickley, have become BFFs and opened a dojo. We learn this when a newspaper appears on screen with the headline “U.S. Champs Open Karate Studio”. It’s followed by an entire page of temp text because Tommys’ brain forgot to visualize a completed article. The headline also calls them “champs”. In reality they are massive losers, but Tommy hasn’t accepted it.
Tldr: lorum ipsum
This time, instead of a sanctioned martial arts tournament, our heroes get mixed up in underground Las Vegas death matches. Absolutely perfect escalation. Every martial arts delusion should involve a kumite. What’s even more perfect is Brakus, the owner of the Vegas fight club and its current champion, berates his security team for being armed. He reminds them his colosseum is a place for warriors, and guns are unmanly. This is purely the fabrication of a delusional foot slapper who needs it to make sense later when his friends storm the place unarmed.
Emcee Wayne Newton explains the rules of the club. There are three resident gladiators plus Brakus himself at the top. Challengers must defeat all three gladiators before earning a fight with Brakus, the winner of which will be the owner of the club. Death isn’t required, but the decision is left up to an audience of rich, bloodthirsty violence tourists so, you know. It’s a good thing Tommy doesn’t understand how the real world works, because “honorable karate slaying” is the most incredible way to become a new business owner.
The challenger on this particular night is Travis Brickley. To Tommy’s credit, it makes sense for Travis to be the one to pursue illegal deathmatches. He’s just good enough at karate to be overconfident in a way you’d imagine a real person might be. The UFC was built on the CTE of guys like this. After the first oily gladiator has been introduced, Travis bounces out with cheeks and nose flushed like the perfect little alcoholic cherub he is. He looks like the default character in a mobile game called Fight Babies.
Despite looking like a Jonah Hill SNL sketch, he’s able to defeat the gladiator fairly easily. Later in the competitor lounge, an amped up Travis talks enough shit to earn a two round bye and an immediate match with the Brakus. The sacred rules of the coliseum mean nothing because none of this is real and Tommy’s brain didn’t feel like waiting for an entire elimination tournament to unfold.
The next day is belt promotion testing for their karate students, which includes Alex’s son Walter from the first film. All the children are finding success with their adorable challenges except Walter, who can’t break the brick wafer designed specifically to be broken by small children. Everyone is disappointed, but -shockingly- Alex doesn’t cry. This is the first major indicator something is amiss. I mean, apart from the illegal high stakes deathmatches guarded by nothing but raw manliness.
Later, Tommy and Alex are getting ready for a double date. Since Walter couldn’t break his brick, karate law dictates he still needs a babysitter. They dump him on Travis because they think he’s going bowling. At first Travis says no because in truth, he’s on his way to fight to the death against Vegas Shao Khan, but Walter begs and Travis immediately folds. He may not be racist anymore, but Travis is still a terrible human being who will absolutely bring a child to an event where, in a best possible case scenario, the child watches his babysitter murder someone. Travis bribes doorman Kane Hodder to let Walter in, which is sadly another indicator of Tommy’s failing mental state. Kane appeared in the first film as Burt, the jealous boyfriend who Travis tricked into punching his own girlfriend. Tommy is clearly recycling familiar faces to fill out his fantasy world.
Tragically, Travis’ point fighting style of karate is pretty useless against a seasoned killer twice his size, so Brakus snaps Travis’ neck after taking zero damage. Walter witnesses the entire thing, so he is now being pursued by a bunch of guys who could have just shot him if they were allowed to carry guns.
Walter runs home to report it all to Alex and Tommy, who immediately head to the coliseum to verify Walter’s story. With no detective training, they start by asking everyone they meet if they killed Travis. Again, since this is all fiction playing out in the mind of a very disturbed man, it completely works. Wayne Newton admits that okay yes, they are running an illegal colosseum and sure literally everything your son said checks out except for the murder part. Travis is totally alive somewhere! This is good enough for our super sleuths, proving all you need to sell an illegal kumite lie is to sprinkle it with a little bit of illegal kumite truth.
They spend the rest of the night searching for Travis only for the police to fish his dead body out of Lake Mead the next morning. The boys go straight back to the coliseum and call bullshit on Wayne’s story. Since directness worked so well last time, they simply ask Brakus if he killed Travis, to which he replies “easily”. With a full confession on the table, they are free to pursue the next logical step which is starting a fist fight right then and there. In the chaos, Tommy hits Brakus, sending him crashing face first into a mirror and cutting his cheek open. Brakus is one of those villains who views any type of damage as losing a piece of his soul, and the only way to reclaim it is through the karate death of the one who took it. Wayne convinces Brakus to wait so they can also make a bunch of money on it.
They have a funeral for Travis and Dae Han shows up. Yes, in addition to the racist karate cowboy, Tommy and Alex are also BFFs with the guy who killed Tommy’s brother in cold blood and didn’t apologize for it until after he was nearly beaten to death.
Brakus’ men relentlessly pursue them back to Alex’s house. Here, we get our first indication that Tommy’s fighting potential has no limits as he fully implodes a guy’s arm into a bone dust filled scrotum.
They head out to Tommy’s adopted Native American grandparents’ place to hide out and train for the inevitable clash with Brakus and I’m sorry what the fuck? Did Tommy’s parents ditch him after his brother’s death? Walter is just as confused, but Alex pats him on the head, promising to explain it later. He never does, and why should he? This was post Dances with Wolves, when the nobility of Native American culture became just another bullet point on delusional martial artists lore tabs.
They receive special training from Tommy’s alcoholic uncle James, played by Native American Nick Nolte, Sonny Landham. He’s the man for the job too because wouldn’t you know it, James also once fought Brakus and barely escaped with his life. If you live in the area and can sort of fight, Brakus seems like a promising high risk job opportunity, like an Alaskan fishing boat for martial artists. James informs them if they can survive round one, there will be a bo staff round, the purpose of which is to show us Tommy is the best of the best at anything he tries, even if it’s for the first time. This is the moment you realize Alex is only in this movie to be a dumb asshole during training so Tommy looks more effortlessly cool. And yeah, fucking mission accomplished:
After an indeterminate amount of time passes, Brakus’ men find them and burn the place to the ground, killing James and presumably everyone else. Tommy now has nothing to live for except kicking the face off Brakus’ head.
They drag Tommy back to the coliseum and tell him he needs to fight his way past the three gladiators, whereupon he will be allowed to challenge Brakus. This is why Travis conveniently got a bye earlier. If he had gotten a legit tournament arc, Travis would have defeated these same guys. Tommy knew you wouldn’t have been as impressed by the way he walks through them if the puffy booze pixie already did it.
Tommy doesn’t just walk through them, he’s straight ambling. He’s so amazing he doesn’t need prep or recovery time. He’s just out-of-the-box able to destroy this diverse roster of fighters using sport taekwondo, only slowing down somewhat against the anime tier guy with nunchucks and a ponytail whip.
Braid whip is honestly a pretty reasonable escalation in made up shit. So spectators are placing their bets on Tommy and Brakus, while Alex, Dae Han, and some other Team Korea members gather upstairs. Their plan is to kick the shit out of everyone they see until they reach Tommy, which works because, again, it’s international fight champions vs no guns.
Brakus looks easily three times bigger than Lee, but since size doesn’t matter in a proper martial arts delusion, Tommy makes it to the bo staff round. Tommy may have picked up a bo staff for the first time the other day and Brakus has apparently been doing this for years, but the fires of a martial arts delusion can never be extinguished by reason.
They begin their stick fight while Alex and company continue spin kicking their way through a security force who are probably so tired of this no guns bullshit. Tommy and Brakus eventually disarm each other and Brakus puts Tommy in the same headlock he killed Travis with. Right when all hope seems lost, Alex kicks a guard through the arena window, inspiring Tommy to live. Tommy escapes and, well, you may have thought it was just cute wording when I mentioned Tommy kicking the face off Brakus’ head, but he really tries to do it in one of the most incredible displays of practical effects I’ve ever seen. Someone thought it would be a good idea to make a ballistic gel mold of actor Ralf Moeller’s head and have Phillip Rhee kick it as hard as he could. They were fucking right by the way. It’s blink and you miss it, but this shit is glorious. It’s exactly what a kick to the face looks like in slow motion, but done at regular speed.
Tommy tries to spare Brakus despite the crowd demanding his life, but Brakus does the classic villain move by dishonorably going for Tommy while his back is turned. In a split second, Tommy understands Brakus will never relent and decides the only way to be truly free is to kill him. The perfect outcome for a guilty conscience struggling to reconcile the embarrassing loss he suffered by simply refusing to kill his defenseless opponent, but something inside him is unresolved because we got:
Having successfully processed his feelings on justifiable murder, Tommy decides to kill racism. Eric Roberts didn’t come back for this one, and if you know anything about film, a casting director saying “we couldn’t get Eric Roberts” is like a caterer saying “we tried to get egg salad but they only had diarrhea.”
Tommy heads to the rural town of Liberty to visit his little sister. Oh right, Tommy has a sister now. The implication here is Tommy’s parents put him up for adoption after his brother’s death but not her, or worse yet, decided to have another child after he was gone. Those are super fucked up possibilities, so it’s lucky she’s only a figment of Tommy’s imagination created to justify a trip to the most racist town in existence.
This place is Project 2025 racist… burning crosses, a murdered black preacher, torched church, n-words covering the school. It’s a town starving for justice. Good thing Tommy Lee just arrived, because he brought enough taekwondo to feed every racist mouth at least one kick.
Tommy is escorted into town by his brother-in-law Christopher McDonald, sheriff of Liberty. After catching Tommy up on all the racism, they head into town to get ice cream for Tommy’s nephew and the son of the murdered preacher and masked racists immediately appear and do racism to Tommy’s sister and the kids. This is Tommy’s first chance to dispense taekwondo, but not before insisting he doesn’t want trouble. Tommy may be an ever evolving killing machine with a ton of blood on his hands, but we must remember the violence he’s continuously steeped in is never his fault. This movie’s kicks require at least one justification and sometimes up to seven cuts.
Tommy decides to stick around and become a part of the community by assuming the role of dunk tank clown at the fair. There he meets a local teacher played by Gina Gershon. Okay, Tommy’s Psychotic Mental Breakdown, sure. In addition to being the most racist place on Earth, this small town is also hiding a prime Gina Gershon. Whatever you say. Racists show up and hand out white power flyers to everyone, including the black children. Gina tries standing up to them, but gets back handed into the dirt for her effort. This time, in oversized shoes and a red nose, Tommy wants trouble. He destroys these men in yet another frightening display of his power scaling, even sending one guy flying through the air with what can only be described as The Force.
The racists have no choice but to declare war on Tommy and his family, but honestly, it never gets better than the clown fight. Tommy’s brain really peaked with that one. Where do you go after literally clowning the master race? The racists use Gina and his family against him, but all they accomplish is bringing Tommy right into their race war compound. I don’t know anything about starting a race war, but I’m pretty sure rule #1 is don’t upset the guy who is 20-0 against your best men. Rule #2 is finish your fence so the hero doesn’t look like an idiot during his daring escape:
Tommy, with some help from McDonald, stops the bad guys by challenging their leader Donnie to single combat. This is a pretty reasonable alternative to having a taekwondo fight against a small army, which, to be clear, I’m not saying Tommy couldn’t do. What isn’t reasonable is how this out of shape backwoods nobody gives Tommy a pretty decent fight. This guy is no Brakus. He’s not even a Travis Brickley. However, the first film did imply racism might be a stat buff, so that could be at play here. Unsurprisingly, Tommy beats the shit out of him and ends up in the familiar position of having a man’s life in his hands. Donnie wants Tommy to kill him because it will ignite a race war. Tommy feels the same way and spares his life, but when Donnie dishonorably draws a gun, his own men shoot him. Turns out they were thoroughly convinced this physically superior asian didn’t DEI their leader’s ass into submission, so they all renounce racism right then and there, including Kane Hodder!
The film opens with a heist by a group of Russian money counterfeiters stealing federal reserve notes. Based on the overall quality of this film, the collapse of Tommy’s mind is nearly complete. This movie is the drooling dementia of a man playing with toys in a mental institution.
The timeline takes another hit when Tommy’s six-year-old daughter is introduced. It’s a reach, but you could argue she might have stayed home while Tommy ran off to recreationally end racism. Although, he was only trying to visit his sister. Why wouldn’t he bring his daughter, with seemingly no other family or friends, to visit her aunt and cousin? Trick question, none of this is real! How have you not figured this out by now? Tommy Lee is not well.
Apparently the karate school Tommy opened with his best friends no longer exists, and neither do they. None of the people he met along the way are anywhere to be found, even including Kane Hodder. Instead, he’s a loner who teaches cops the type of Steven Seagal knife self defense that will definitely get them killed. A hilariously grumpy Ernie Hudson walks in, throws a lit cigarette on the floor and demonstrates to everyone exactly how they will die. Sure, Tommy does the thing all fantasy martial artists do by going ah, but you see, I could have stabbed you in the dick, but the scene does a poor job selling how this somehow trumps having his entire fucking head blown off.
One of the techs from the counterfeit operation grows a conscience and steals a crucial file. Before she can get it into the hands of authorities, the bad guys catch up with her at her dad’s market, which also happens to be where Tommy shops for birthday cake ingredients. If these guys knew anything about Tommy Lee, they’d know he doesn’t want trouble, only cake ingredients. If they really knew anything about Tommy, they’d know it’s just a cute thing he says right before kicking you to the edge of death. Tommy grabs a shotgun from one of them and shoots him in the chest without hesitation.
He’s wearing a vest, but I don’t think Tommy knew it, and at this point, I don’t think he cares. He used to have a clear line he didn’t cross, like Christopher Nolan’s Batman. Now it feels like there never was a line in the first place, like Zach Snyder’s Batman.
The tech girl slips the file into Tommy’s pocket during the scuffle and now he’s a man on the run, wanted by both sides of the law and, you know what, don’t even worry about it. This shit is so uninspired and boring Ernie Hudson didn’t even read the script. He shows up, spews whatever hard boiled cop cliche he can think of and still eats every scene he’s in. Hudson was in Ghostbusters. He was in The Crow. He was in god damn Dolemite. His legacy in film history is cemented while Best of the Best 4: Best of the Best Without Warning is probably the first and last movie these other actors were ever in. With the exception of Tobin Bell who plays the head Russian. His accent is… there’s an interview Bell did for the AV Club. In it, he tells an anecdote about the time he played a cop in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. He decided his character could have more depth if he was smoking a cigar. Bell went full Inside the Actor’s Studio talking about how to make your character feel alive, to give them real history and this cigar was the key. Scorsese took one look at it and said “lose the cigar” without any other clarification. Anyway, his Russian accent is 100% Goodfellas cigar.
Ernie Hudson’s partner ends up being in league with the counterfeiters, so Tommy kills him in self defense. This puts Ernie on his trail, but the truth eventually comes out and Hudson becomes an uneasy ally. Together, they infiltrate the counterfeit operation and shut it down for good. No underground death matches. No hillbilly race war compounds. Just a paint-by-numbers action hero fantasy from the mind of someone who has truly lost it. The conflicted martial arts competitor who chose life over victory is no more. All we are left with is a guy who can unironically disarm a man with fork kick.
Okay, bye. Fork kick is Karate for “The End.”
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Rhia, a manananggal trained in the art of kali sent to earth to fight one man in BEST OF THE BEST EIGHTEEN: OH NO YOU TAEKWONDON’T!