The Quest

This is my first Van Damme movie while running. It definitely isn't his best work but also better than some of his newer straight to DVD movies. It is also directed by Jean Claude himself. This brings me to my first point; Van Damme movies always have the trade mark triple take of every medium to major kick or punch. It happens so often it kind of gets old but now we have a movie that he is the director and the triple take was gone. I always thought that he did it because he thought he was awesome but it must have been somebody else idea. Okay to get to the movie now. He is a lovable street thief that is only doing it to help a bunch of homeless kids. He ends up getting into trouble and ends up on a boat. From there he is sold to a oriental dude that trains him to fight. He ends up going to a secret battle deep in Asia. He makes it to the last fight and in typical Van Damme fashion (Rocky Balboa is the same way) he gets the crap kicked out of him; going down like three times he should have been dead. He fights his way back and wins so he can return to the hobo children and make a good life for them. 90 minute movie and I ran 90 minutes so I would say it was a successful movie.

Last Action Hero

I wish I could start my reviews with a greater film but here we are. The Last Action Hero starring none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger staring as a typical action hero in several movies that a teenage kid enjoys watching. The kid gets sucked into the movie screen and becomes Arnold's sidekick. The villain gets a hold of the ticket that transports people between worlds and ends up in real life where Arnold and the kid must save the day. This movie started out good enough as a running movie. Plenty of action to make you forget about glancing at the clock every 5 minutes. There is one particular good scene where a dead body is set to fart out nerve gas that came around the 5-6 mile mark that held my attention. After they transported to the real world it went down hill and as I finished a little more than 7 miles I was left with 10-15 minutes left of movie that I may not watch. I rate this movie a B- being carried by the action scenes and the soundtrack.