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Jean-Claude Van Damme was our ass-kicking idol in the late ’80s and early ’90s. His movies — while always considered cheesetastic and highly edited — were nonetheless a staple of our VHS collections. The action in his films such as Bloodsport and Double Impact were as good as it gets at the time, sort of in the same way our Nintendo was. Both don’t hold up, but we enjoyed them at the time. These days we don’t hear much Van Damme, and even when we do, it’s usually just a clip from an interview gone wrong, or a commercial of some sort playing off his past fame.
That, my friends, is about to end. Ass-kicking is back! In this just-released Entertainment Weekly exclusive clip from the new action film, Kickboxer: Vengeance, we get a taste of what to expect from the film that will hit theaters, VOD, and digital HD on Sept. 2. What we see is the extremely menacing Dave Bautista in the role of Thailand martial artist Tong Po, with Van Damme playing Master Durand, and a slew of UFC and MMA fighters you’ve undoubtedly heard of making cameos. Among those familiar fighters, both current and retired, are George St-Pierre, Gina Carano, Cain Velasquez, and Fabrício Werdum.
The Kickboxer reboot follows much of the same script as the 1989 original, minus a few details (we won’t spoil it for you, but if you watch the trailer above you can see for yourself). From the looks of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s IMDb profile, he’s currently filming a movie called Kickboxer: Retaliation, so this looks like it won’t be the last we see of the Kickboxer franchise, good or bad.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
