Customer Reviews

Gymkata

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Extremely reminiscent of cold war sleepers like "Gorky Park" and "Reds", Gymkata is one of the most carefully scripted and brooding commentaries on American foreign policy during the Reagan years. The film is more like a documentary than a work of fiction in its deep attention to historical accuracies and avoidance of hyperbole.

Robert Clouse's directorial adaption of Dan Tyler Moore's Pulitzer-shortlisted novel manages to capture timbre of the times and the voice of the decade in a script of intricate complexity. Kurt Thomas's portrayal of the hero across from Tetchie Agbayani's heroine is one of the most dynamic and surprising chemistries since Bogart and Bergman's 43 years before.

However, where "Casablanca" fell far short of documenting the spirit (and fears) of the times on a granular level, Gymkata and its cast is unafraid to take this plunge.

In characterizations deeply respectful, and yet photo-accurate, regarding world cultures and global motifs, Gymkata manages spell the poly-sided views of complex conflicts that occurred during the final grey gasps of the Cold War.

Amazingly Gymkata manages a foreshadowing the rise of the Neo-Cons some 20 years later in its depictions of the United States use of aggression in strategically important hotspot regions -- and as well -- the film is able to show that the nationalistic concerns of the competing sovreignties (both ally & foe) remain unchanged despite which decade these events play themselves out in.

A timeless film, Gymkata should be a core film study in every graduate level political science class.

When I was growing up, it seemed like every other movie on cable television was either called Iron Eagle or Gymkata. I had no use for Iron Eagle. Sorry. Gymkata, however, was a altogether different story. I must have seen this movie a few hundred times between grades 10-12--generally at three in the morning, stumbling in, stumbling out--less of a choice, more of a compromise. As if the pay channels didn't milk the Gymkata cash cow dry, local stations decided to make it their duty to keep it in heavy rotation on a weekly basis. The only movie that came close in its domination of b-string broadcasting was the 1972 classic, Gargoyles. But I digress. Gymkata is about a martial artist (Kurt Thomas) who loses his military papa (Eric Lawson). He goes to a small fictional nation that encompasses every clich? relating to villains from the 1980's. There's intrigue, a great feast, and more intrigue. There's an exotic princess who, to this day, still looks pretty good. The best part of the movie is the game of death--mostly because there isn't a great deal of dialog. As other reviews have mentioned, the asylum/village has some classic moments (the cackling woman comes to mind). Long story short, an olympic wannabe offers up a textbook example of why his acting career went nowhere. Of course, who am I to judge? I have yet to make a single movie about ninjas or good cops gone bad.

One last question: Why isn't this movie on DVD?

YAKMALA! And with that one echoing word we're off and running through the streets of crazy town (complete with the palma horse at it's center) in the non-stop action fest that is Gymkata!

This film has it all...
Ninjas!
Terrorists!
Barbarians!
Boat chases!
Pre-chalked surfaces for our hero to spin around on!
Bad acting!
A dead pig!
A cackling old lady!
Punches!
Kicks!
A subtle plotline about the development and installation of an important American satellite (that is so subtle it needs to be addressed in a caption at the closing seconds of the movie)!
Flips!
Death sports!
Cliff-diving!
The answer to the age old question: What if a world class gymnast was also skilled in the ancient fighting arts?!
80's hair!

I could just go on-and-on but why bother! Why aren't you watching this movie by now? IT'S ON DVD FOR GOD'S SAKE!

Kurt Thomas as a gymnast turned lethal martial artist? Only in Hollywood! The idea only works if every time Thomas gets into a fight there just happens to be a piece of gymnastic equipment nearby (parallel bars, pommel horse, etc.) and of course the bad guys attack one at a time, but I guess that's just a martial arts movie tradition. The acting is brutal, the plot could've been thought up by a ten year-old, and there's a village of insane killers. Put it all together and it all adds up to a hilarious movie.

Rating "Gymkata" is an exercise in futility. I ended up with three stars, all for unintentional hilarity. The concept of making world champion gymnast Kurt Thomas (as Jonathan Cabot) train in a totally new style of martial art combining traditional fighting techniques with gymnastics, then sending him on a secret mission to "Parmistan" to secure a base for a US "Star Wars" operation makes the mind reel. Needless to say the movie is wildly unsuccessful as a serious action film, but is rife with comedic moments.

Thomas' acting is more wooden than any of the oaks, beeches, or larches he spends the better part of the movie running through, not than even an accomplished thespian could make much of this mess. You know you're in for a rough ride when the film starts with clips of a gymnastic routine intercut with a stampede of Mongols riding horses. We then get the backstory about the whole Star Wars base in Parmistan. Since the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI,) commonly referred to as "Star Wars" in the press, used satellites, how is it they need this one forsaken strip of land in the Hindu Kush? Explain, please. Anyway, suspending disbelief just a bit more, he trains for two months by chopping wood and walking up stairs on his hands so he can compete in "The Game" which has not been won by a non-Parmistanian in 900 years. It's a savage game and involves spears, ropes, impalings, etc. But Jonathan has no issues competing as his father had previously disappeared in Parmistan playing the Game. Understand that the winner of the game gets to live, and the Parmistan government grants the winner one wish, which Thomas will use to get the Star Wars base. Of course governments in that part of the world are just known for being reputable, honorable, and keeping their word, so I can't see any problems with this premise in the least.

Jonathan, of course, falls in love with Princess Rubali (Tetchie Agbayani), who is to be wed to the evil Zamir (Richard Norton), because the idiot King (Buck Kartalian) trusts him, despite the obvious facts that Zamir is effectively running the country for his own nefarious purposes. Ironically, "Gymkata" was filmed in Yugoslavia before a very real civil war tore it apart just a couple of years later. How's that for foreshadowing? To help him blend into the crowd of gray-clad Eastern Europeans, Thomas elects to play the Game in a bright red shirt. His plan is certainly cunning. The Game itself is a procession of ugly people doing ugly things to other ugly people, and features such poignant vignettes as some sort of monk in a buttock-baring hospital robe attempting to distract him to death, the worst pig feeding scene (with accompanying ridiculous escape) in movie history, and, my personal favorite scene in the film, when he beats up an entire village using a pommel horse thoughtfully placed in the middle of the village square for the use of death-gymnasts. This must be seen to be believed.

Much of the chase is in slow motion (as if the movie needed to drag on longer,) but when it wraps up it concludes very quickly with the stunning revelation that Jonathan's Dad is still alive, although within about two minutes of Jonathan's arrival his Dad gets shot in the back, which results in the ultimate one on one gymkata vengeance round, while simultaneously the King and Princess (in a lovely all black catsuit) start a revolution (or anti-revolution, if you like) to take control back from Zamir. Obviously Jonathan wins the Princess' heart and a title card tells us that the US built its Star Wars station in Parmistan in 1985.

This movie is utterly relentless in its badness. The concept, casting, direction, and acting are universally terrible. Thomas is completely unviable as an actor, and the film fails on any serious level. It does wildly succeed as an example of anti-art, and is worth examination by lovers of cheesy movies everywhere (it would have made an excellent episode of MST3K.) The only good thing about the film is the excellent and wholly suitable Yugoslav location, which was a great (and low cost) touch.

Extras are slim; I would have loved to hear a commentary track from Thomas and noted martial arts director Robert Clouse. Instead all that's offered is a theatrical trailer for the film and a bonus (and extremely incongruous) trailer for "The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning" starring Willie Nelson, which looks, if anything, even worse than "Gymkata," which may be the precise reason it's featured as an extra here. It's a futile attempt to make "Gymkata" look better by comparison, but at this point there's really nothing to do but grasp at straws.

It has the most horrible action senses ever made. The corniest plot ever. The worst acting ever, yet why is it so funny? Look at all the reasons above. The American gov. bring a gymnastics athelete to help "preserve" the gov. or something else which is stupid; then it has him use gymnstics on all the "bad" guys (they also were "bad" at acting). They had 3different sound effects for the whole movie. However, if you seriously want to laugh watch Gymkata...for best viewing bring the most sarcastic person you know to watch it with you because he/she will bring up great points. At the end once he's won (ofcourse), the movie producers have some writing on a still frame and then it made me wonder if that is what the movie was about. To some it all up, Funny, Strange, Stupid, FUNNY!

Based on the 1957 novel, The Terrible Game, the filmmakers' first misstep was changing the title to Gymkata. (We would have opted for a more modest adjustment, and called it simply, The Terrible Movie.) The Terrible Game is actually The Most Dangerous Game, as designed by the President's Council on Physical Fitness. It requires the player to run around and climb a rope, and we're told that only a select few people in the world can meet this grueling challenge: either world-class gymnasts, like American champion Kurt Thomas, or 11-year olds who've passed sixth-grade gym.

The film opens with an angry white man -- Kurt's dad, who's apparently playing on the Terrible Game Senior Tour -- attempting to cross the rope bridge at Camp Snoopy. Richard Norton (who we know is evil because he's wearing Sonny Bono's sheepskin vest from Wild on the Beach) shoots an arrow into Kurt's dad, who falls to his death.

Cut to the United States, where the Olympic Games are being held in a high-school auditorium.

American champion Kurt Thomas dismounts the parallel bars, and is immediately recruited by the CIA to play The Game, which is held in Parmistan, a mountain kingdom ruled by "the Khan." Kurt will be trained by Princess Ruballi, the Khan's daughter, and even though she spends the first half of the film attempting to do grievous harm to his groin (knee it, stab it, rope-burn it, etc.), Ruballi eventually becomes Kurt's love interest, because she's the only person in the film who's shorter than he is.

Kurt and the Princess white-water raft into Parmistan, where they're promptly attacked by Himalayan ninjas (clad in black Dr. Dentons). Hopelessly outnumbered, Kurt unleashes the secret martial art of Gymkata, and manages to overcome his assailants using the deadly power of Olga Korbut's compulsory floor routine from the '72 Olympics.

Once in the capital, Kurt and the other competitors meet the Khan, (apparently a member of The Davy Crockett Hair Club for Men), who explains the rules: Basically, you run around and climb on various pieces of playground equipment until someone shoots you with an arrow. If Kurt wins, the U.S. will be allowed to build a "Star Wars" satellite-tracking station in Parmistan. If Kurt loses, he will be killed in the traditional way: shot with an arrow while playing the "Smack the Mole" game at a Chuck E. Cheese.

The next morning, the Khan announces that Sheepskin will wed Princess Ruballi after the game, with a reception to follow at Medieval Times restaurant. Then the competitors are off and running. Amazingly, Kurt makes it across the rope bridge without getting shot by an arrow, and enters "The Village of the Damned," -- a planned community for the criminally insane. No one has ever escaped alive from this blood-soaked bedlam, and it is soon apparent why. In short order, Kurt is attacked by a man with a sickle, beaten to a pulp by a pack of Italian grandmothers, and mooned. Finally, the entire populace converges on Kurt, shrieking and waving various farm implements as they surround him in the village square. Fortunately, next to the communal well is the communal pommel horse. Leaping onto it, Kurt manages to kill the axe-wielding maniacs with a quick and deadly series of Magyar and Sivado cross-travel variations.

The surviving villagers give Kurt a 9.2.

The crazed peasants chase Kurt into a blind alley, forcing him to climb a sheer wall, but he's too much of a pussy to reach the top. Surprisingly, one of the Himalayan ninjas reaches down and pulls Kurt to safety. He then peels off the black mask and reveals that he is, in fact, . . .Kurt's dad! It turns out that he wasn't killed in that fall after all, just maimed. Their tearful reunion is interrupted when Sheepskin shoots Kurt's dad with an arrow ...again! Springing into action, Kurt heroically jumps onto a horse ...and rides away. Sheepskin catches up to our fleeing hero and gives him a well-deserved thrashing. But Kurt cleverly goes into "rope-a-dope," outlasting his opponent until they get to the page in the script where it says he wins. Sheepskin takes a dive, and Kurt proudly rides back into town with Dad, who's been maimed some more, but is otherwise just fine. Now, at last, everyone knows the truth: Sheepskin is a traitor, and Kurt's dad is Rasputin.

Oh ...,

and Kurt wins The Game -- But if you ask us, he won ugly.

i remember watching this movie as a young lad on HBO quite a bit. As i grew older, i forgot about it. then, one day, i saw they were releasing it on DVD and i knew i had to have it. My friend and I fondly remember this movie for one reason: the pumel horse in the middle of the town of crazies! When my copy of this fine film arrived at my house, i immediately watched it. it is still a fun, campy film to this day. If you haven't seen Gymkata, i think you should check it out. fun all around.

To be free again, lithe, weightless, tumbling through the air, soaring merely upon the self-consciously constructed beauty of my own self-confidence. These were dreams for me, in my youth, in my salad days. Alas, those dreams were not to be. Blessed not with the gracefullness and joy of male gymnastics, behooven to those hoofy thugs who would describe themselves as physical educators, I suffered mightly, shamed at basketball, confined to cleaning up the floor at the spittle and sweat of those much more athletically inclined. I champed at the bit of my inequity, knowing revenge would someday be mine. Then, I saw this beautiful movie. And I was inspired. Nay! I was uplifted! I knew then the name that I had always wanted to know, but had not spoken, for it was not in my consciousness just yet. I knew: GYMKATA!

There are two things that make this movie a must see: Kurt Thomas' mullet and the "Village of the Damned" scene. Although the movie has a slow and pretty dry build up, stick with it until the last 20 minutes of the movie for the classic fight scene. Kurt must get out of a village (enclosed in high walls) in order to complete the final stage of the race he's in. Crazy old people cackle at him from windows and pay close attention to the two-face man. Echoed lauging and screaming make this scene insane. Plus the chase is unbelievable. Have plenty of budah ready.