‘Best of the Best 2’ (1993) Review

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Over on Kung Pew Video, I’ve been revisiting the direct-to-video relics that raised us. This week: Best of the Best 2.

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Karate Bros

Most karate movies are about action: punches, kicks, blood, and mayhem. 

Best of the Best 2 is about bros. 

Sure, it’s basically an underground fight ring movie. But how many of those have you seen where the heroes go on a campout together, roast marshmallows, and share heartfelt bonding moments before heading out on a revenge bloodhunt?

Well, that’s Best of the Best 2.

And honestly, the totally sincere way this movie portrays its male relationships is why it still holds up. 

Part Family Movie, Part Revenge Bloodhunt

I picked up the first three Best of the Best movies at a Half Price Books and I remember looking at the cover for 2 and thinking Oh, yeah. I remember this now. Over the top Wayne Newton and some pretty good fight scenes.

What I didn’t remember was the picture of male friendship this movie so sincerely paints. 

If Stand By Me is all about reaching the end of the railroad tracks of childhood and transitioning away from those strong, early friendships and entering a world where we have to figure things out on our own, Best of the Best 2 imagines a world where the campout never ends, where you and your bros open a karate school, still do everything together, and always have each other’s backs. 

Which makes this sound like a completely different movie than what it really is. 

But like I said, once it gets rolling, Best of the Best 2 is an example of the underground fight ring movie: think Enter the Dragon, Lionheart, and American Samurai.

The Back of the VHS

When we catch up with Tommy, Alex, and Travis (played by Phillip Rhee, Eric Roberts, and Chris Penn), they’ve parlayed their stardom as national karate champs into a booming martial arts business they co-own and operate in Las Vegas. 

We get to see the trio working together, hosting a black belt test, and shepherding the next generation of little dojo bros. Basically living as one big happy family…in Sin City of all places.

Anyway, everything seems to be going great. 

Until the impulsive and hotheaded Travis enters a fighting competition called the Coliseum that’s held in the bowels of a popular Vegas night club. 

We see Travis in a bright blue karate gi looking like a chubby Power Ranger dispatch some guy who looks like he just walked off the set of a Spartacus episode. The rules of the Coliseum are simple: beat three guys and you get to challenge the champ–Brakus, played by Ralf Moeller in his debut film role. 

But Travis is cocky and doesn’t want to wait. He demands his shot, so they give it to him. Guess it never hurts to ask.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Travis that combatants fight to the death in the Coliseum. 

And because we need something for the other two karate bros to do for the rest of the movie besides roast marshmallows, (wouldn’t you know it?) Brakus quickly kills Travis. 

But Walter, Alex’s kid from the first movie (played by the same actor surprisingly), witnesses Travis’s murder and quickly runs home to tell daddy…who is slow-dancing with Meg Foster in the living room while Tommy and his date are passed out on the couch.

As you do.

So the duo head out immediately to investigate and hopefully find their friend still alive and kicking.

They quickly meet Wayne Newton (the Coliseum’s ring announcer and Brakus’s partner), who assures the two Travis left the club earlier in the night drunk and in the company of a few babes. 

But when Travis’s body is found floating in the river with a broken neck the next day, Alex and Tommy spring into action to avenge their murdered dojo bro. 

Cue the sunset training montages and video game fight scenes all inevitably leading to a climax where one of our heroes kicks Ralf Moeller repeatedly in the face.

Three Men and a Baby Meets Bloodsport

Best of the Best 2 is basically Three Men and a Baby meets Bloodsport.

So you have this strange contrast of sincere family movie with campouts and double dates that takes a sharp detour about a third of the way into brutal revenge flick territory with rich people in tuxedos and cocktail dresses watching dudes get their backs broken for laughs. 

One minute, we’re engrossed in Walter training hard for his black belt and learning all of these valuable life lessons, and the next we’re watching Tommy and Alex punch old mattresses as they train to take revenge against Brakus for killing their best bud Travis. 

Oh, and by the way, the kid who played Walter (Edan Gross) must have gotten into taekwondo after the first movie, because he looks great during his training and testing sequences. Credit where credit is due. 

The Importance of the Training Montage

Now did I mention training montages? Because man, Best of the Best 2 loves the training montage. And it loves to set them to electric guitar-heavy pop music and frame them against pure blue desert skies and blazing sunsets. 

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that in this movie, Tommy’s backstory has been changed. In the first movie, he’s raised by Korean parents, which we clearly see in flashbacks. But in the sequel, he is inexplicably and suddenly the adopted son of a Native American woman he affectionately calls “Grandma” (played by Betty Carvalho, who you might recognize from Die Hard).

So why’d they change it?

Well, I think it makes sense when you notice how heavily the movie leans into Americana imagery.

Alex, Tommy, and Travis all wear cowboy boots and jeans and drive classic muscle cars. The black belt testing scene at the beginning of the movie is draped in American flags. The whole movie’s shot in the American southwest, birthplace of the American cowboy. It even puts the guys through a Native American sweat lodge ritual. 

Best of the Best 2 doesn’t care so much about continuity as it does in turning our karate bro champs into bonafide American folk heroes. It throws all of that imagery–cowboys, martial artists, Native American spirituality, muscle cars, and desert sunsets–into a blender in a valiant attempt to create this weird, sincere mythology for our characters–styled by Ralph Lauren, of course–that could only exist in Hollywood action movies from the 80s and 90s. 

And how can you not love that?

Sonny Landham: Drunken Master

Besides, the Native American angle gives us Sonny Landham as James, Tommy’s uncle. 

And these are some of the best moments in the movie. 

James is a failed prize fighter and a drunk who has recently washed up on Grandma’s doorstep. Turns out, there’s no love lost between him and Tommy, but Grandma insists James dry out and help train Tommy and Alex. So after some cajoling, James agrees, and before you know it Tommy and Alex are doing kata and practicing stick fighting to the sweet, sweet sounds of electric rock guitar–while some random Native American dudes sit on some rocks and watch. 

The training montages are great on their own. But the best part about these scenes is Landham. The guy shoulda had a bigger career. I loved him in 48 Hours and Predator, and he’s just as good in this. I mean, his character may be the only character in the movie that has an arc now that I think about it. 

And as much as I could make this whole review about him, I gotta give some love to Wayne Newton. 

One of the things I remember most vividly about watching this movie about 4 million times on Showtime back in the day is Newton enthusiastically yelling “And you love it, yeah!” every time he announces a new fight in the Coliseum. I don’t know why, but I just find that so amusing. It’s just so corny, but Newton’s about the only guy in Hollywood that I think could make those scenes work. And he sells the hell out of ‘em. 

Why Best of the Best 2 Still Works

Now clearly I love this movie. But should you bother with it? 

The straight talk is: Best of the Best 2 isn’t as good as the original. It’s certainly not as iconic. And as much as I love it, there’re some continuity issues and some unresolved conflicts between some of the characters. I think the only characters that have a real arc are Walter and James. 

The fight scenes are good, but they’re not great. Nothing nearly as memorable as the final fight between Tommy and Dae Han from the original. Ralf Moeller is a lumbering body builder and clearly not agile enough to be some elite proto-MMA fighter. But if you could buy Schwarzenegger as some paragon of hand-to-hand fighting back in the day, I’m sure you can look past Moeller’s limitations in this movie and just enjoy the VHS madness for what it is. 

Besides, let’s face it, the premise is pretty dopey. 

I think there was a missed opportunity to take the idea of the three guys owning the dojo together somewhere more interesting than an underground fight ring.

Which we already have about a million of.

But despite the unrelenting amounts of goofiness, it’s all done with a completely straight face. 

Eric Roberts plays the role of Alex as seriously as he would any other role in any other movie. The guys’ friendships, the camping trips, the double dates, the slow dancing in the living room, the schmaltzy black belt test, Alex and Walter’s relationship–it’s all handled with the utmost sincerity. 

Tommy, Travis, and Alex are a brotherhood. A family. They love each other and aren’t afraid to show it or say it, and the filmmakers aren’t embarrassed to lay it all out there on screen and let it be what it is. 

There’s no chuckling or winking at the camera to show that the filmmakers know that you know that they know that you know how stupid it all is. There’s no jokes about bromances or any of that crap.

And because it’s played straight, you buy the rest of it. The whole enchilada.

The multiple training montages. The killsquad Wayne Newton sends to Grandma’s house to snuff out Alex and Tommy for…reasons. The explosions. The underground death matches. Patrick Kilpatrick laughing maniacally every time he’s in front of the camera. Ralf Moeller as a deadly fighter…

It all works because it’s sincere in everything it’s trying to do. This is a world that is silly but cohesive because the filmmakers never flinch. They never try to hedge to avoid some uptight critic’s assessment. They just own it all. 

Front to back.  

What’s Missing from Modern Movies

And that’s what’s missing from movies today. 

Everything has to have a logical explanation. Everything has to be realistic. It all has to be researched and vetted by experts. 

Which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with being detailed. But not at the expense of imagination and fantasy and storytelling. 

Movies from this time period didn’t give a crap about realism. They were interested in constructing worlds of possibility, in entertaining their audiences, and inspiring people to believe they could do amazing, sensational things if they worked hard enough at them. 

Does Best of the Best 2 deliver on that promise?

Hell yeah, it does. 

Do I recommend it to you?

Hell yeah, I do. 

So go on. Pour yourself a drink and pop Best of the Best 2 in on a Saturday night. And dare to imagine that you could ever be cool enough to kick ass with Tommy and Alex and Travis. 

But don’t be surprised if you find yourself shopping for bright blue karate gis the next morning, shadow boxing in the mirror while you brush your teeth, and wondering if your best dojo bros would show up for you. 

Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

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Kung Pew Video is where I dig into the neon-drenched, straight-to-VHS corner of film history. New episodes weekly. Be kind. Subscribe. See ya in the VHS wasteland.