Anyway, the basic story is that JCVD plays Kurt, the trainer for his brother Eric (Dennis Alexio), who heads to Thailand to take on their kickboxing champ, Tong Po (Michel Qissi). Tong Po makes a fool out of Eric and paralyzes him, so of course Kurt swears revenge.

After pairing up with an nutty sidekick, Winston (Haskell Anderson), Eric begins training with the mysterious Xian (Dennis Chan). Eric becomes a very strong fighter, but will it be enough to defeat Tong Po?

If you don't know (or can't guess) the answer, then please shut off your computer, then go and tell mommy that your diapie needs to be changed because you just made boom-boom. Kickboxer is by-the-numbers stuff all the way.

But that's not really a bad thing. The acting, for the most part, is done really well, and the viewer doesn't mind watching the exposition scenes. Dennis Chan is especially good in a role that could have easily turned into the stereotypical "crazy sifu" stuff.

And the fight scenes (helmed by Van Damme himself) are pretty exciting. In fact, Kickboxer's main fault that there just isn't enough of them. While I enjoyed the film, it still fells like it need more punch -- literally.

There are a few very solid action scenes, most notably the final confrontation between Kurt and Tong Po, but Kickboxer really needed a couple of additions in the fight department if it was to be raised to the level of action movie greatness.

As it stands, though, Kickboxer's still a fun movie, and perfect for those nights when you're armed with a gutful of beverages and looking for some good old-fashioned brainless entertainment.

Having said all that as a preface, "Dragon Tiger Gate" is a stylish movie with lots of tasty visuals. The fu in the movie is wire-fu for sure, but the choreography is generally very good, being done by Donnie Yen. One complaint easily leveled by fu fans is the relative paucity of the fu in the movie – this is largely a story-driven (if shallow) movie with fights of importance to the storyline tying things together.

There are some seriously slow moments if all you are looking for is action, but if you can stick with it the story and imagery is worth the sit. There are some really nice pieces of camerawork and cinematography in this movie – one example is the series of overhead shots of the pogoda fights about a third the way through the film. Whether done by crane in a set or with CGI, they are nice.

The three male leads – Donnie Yen, Nicholas Tse Ting Fung and Shawn Yue Man Lok – all do a fine job both with acting and fighting. Of course one needs to always keep in mind that this is a comic book movie to set aside the goofy hairstyles donned by the leads – truly bad ‘peek-a-boo’ cuts. Shaw Brothers veteran Chen Kuan-Tai does a turn as the bad-guy father-figure/boss to Yen’s character (Dragon), but his talents, both as an actor and definitely as a fu artist, are completely wasted in this role – too bad really. Yet in total "Dragon Tiger Gate" is a decent story, generally well acted; and the fight scenes, while relatively few, are quite solid as wire fu goes. Solid 3.5 star movie.