The film that launched Jean Claude Van Damme as a star and he's the best thing about it - in addition to the standard fighting hero stuff (quick with fists, good build), he has fresh faced, innocent good looks, and a naive quality that is appealing, even if his acting is limited; the accent is part of the charm.
This has an odd sort of plot: he plays an army guy who goes AWOL in order to compete in a mysterious underground fight tournament in Hong Kong. A pretty journalist wants to know about this tournament, so sleeps with Jean Claude; two special agents (one of them Forest Whittaker!) want to track him down and bring him back to the army for no really good reason; Jean Claude is doing it for the honour of his teacher... who is still alive (is it that important?). He fights the main baddy to get revenge for crippling his friend (Orgre from Revenge of the Nerds) - but he only just met Ogre and Ogre kind of deserved it anyway because he gloated when the fight was still going on. And it's based on a true story.
Location filming in Hong Kong helps, and there are some decent fight scenes. It's got late 80s charm too, such as the Cannon Group logo, rock soundtrack, wisecracking Chinese sidekick, the hair of the girl; there's also a flashback to Jean Claude as a kid, meeting his sensei - the young actor has a weird accent and everything.
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