Sean’s movie thoughts

All action movies are unrealistic. Some are more unrealistic than others. It is part of the genre. When does an action movie become too unrealistic?  Your opinions will vary from film to film. I like Gymkata, and it is unrealistic. That is okay, it was not meant to be realistic.  Taken, for example, is more realistic than Gymkata. Taken is not that realistic though.  If the action movie has some science fiction elements, some things are more acceptable then those things would be in an action movie without science fiction elements. I like the last John Wick movie but there were some scenes where John Wick should not have been able to get up. Spider-man would not be able to get up from that John Wick did. If this does not bother you, cool.

Gymkata is kind of silly. However it is hard to dislike this film. Kurt Thomas, a real life gymnastics champion, stars as Jonathan Cabbot, a young gymnast being trained to compete in a life and death game in an small Asian country.  There are no guns allowed in the country. This is fun. The fights vary from kind of silly to kind of awesome. Some of the fights are both. It is funny how there are convenient gymnastic props laying around allowing Jonathan to use his gymnastic skills. Richard Norton is one of the villains, and he looked sinister with a beard. Thomas did nice backflips and he comes across as a likeable hero. The training scenes are fun. It probably helped that his character was a novice hero, not an established one. Maybe I am being too generous because I remember this film from the days it used to be shown on HBO. I think this film is oddly sincere which makes it likable.

Gymkata is a silly movie. At one point the hero tells a villain to put his hardware back into his pants. (He was referring to knives.)This is not to suggest the movie is terrible. (It might be though.) This movie features a man combining karate and gymnastics into a new fighting style. You either go for this kind of nonsense or you don’t. It is fun. Some of the fight scenes are good. Richard Norton is on hand on as a villain. Kurt Thomas was an Olympian but as an actor, he is not great. (He did not have a long acting career after this.) I might have seen worse or less likable action heroes in my time. I did like his ability to do a backflip. Thomas plays Jonathan Cabot and he is recruited by US government to take part in a contest called the Game (the rules of which aren’t really explained) in a country called Parmistan and if he wins the US will get to deploy a statelite from Parmistan. The country has conviently located props for Jonathan to use his gymnastics skills while fighti...