Bloodfight

An entertainingly offbeat, and clumsy 'Bloodsport'/'Kickboxer' riff starring Yasuaki Kurata and Simon Yam. Bolo Yeung also appears, and sporting a cobra tattoo on his forehead?! The main villain. Still, not enough Yeung when it came to shove.

Goofy acting (centred mainly around a group of eccentric young thugs led by a white dude), but this being a Japanese production made in Hong Kong where English was the chosen dialect meant awkward exchanges aplenty. There are stiff emotional moments thanks to the delivery, but when it came to the self-loathing it was felt. So we get the standard training scenes, which leads to a tournament all driven by revenge and pride.

The violence is on the gritty side, mainly due to how it was shot. Punishing combat when it came to the tournament. Blood, sweat and litres of saliva. Great locale colour, moments of pulpy flash and a pop ballad closing credits.

Right out of the gate, Bloodfight is a unique piece of martial arts cinema, shot by a Japanese crew, filmed in phonetic English and set in Hong Kong starring a plethora of recognisable names including a baby-faced Simon Yam, unfortunately, there's no escaping the fact that Bloodfight simply isn't a very good film in its own right. Part of the problem is that it never really knows what story it is trying to tell; half of the film is a Bloodsport rip-off while the other is a messily cobbled-together morality tale. The film was clearly marketed towards an international audience with the all-English dialogue but the cast's varying grasp of the language is make or break at best, although there's very little that can elevate material as hammy as this, they try their damnedest to do so. Nevertheless, despite the film's issues, it's made with a lot of earnestness, which I can never bring myself to hate. Shûji Gotô's direction is fine if often let down by some clumsy editing and bland fights, while the soundtrack by Micky Oguchi is one of synth-pop goodness. While on paper Bloodfight may have seemed like a winner, the execution is a different matter entirely; I still ended up liking this way more than I expected but so much of the film comes across as unsatisfying, one I'm sure Frank Dux would have a field day with if he ever watched it.

The only good thing about this movie is more of the clone to "Bloodsport". Since the senses turned to the bottle after his student was killed in the tournament. It shows how pathetic he is. After he wises up, he goes back into training. Most would go back to training following an injury. That is a wise move. Staying hurt or angry leads to downfall. His desires are always his pride. He should have used them for better purposes.

Bolo Yeung character is the same as it was in "Bloodsport". A bloodthirsty character. Like in the last one, he killed his opponent.

This movie is a mirror image of the last one 2 out of 5 stars.

I saw this movie in my local Book Off store here in NYC. It had Bolo Yeung on the cover of the DVD and being a huge fan of Bolo, I was immediately intrigued and I purchased it.

Overall, it's rough with the language because it's in Asian so I had to watch it on English subtitles. Starts off a little slow but if you hang in there, you'll get rewarded with a great fight scene between the main hero of the film and the main villain which is Bolo. Not a bad action film.

Nothing particularly notable about this one. Plot is almost identical to VanDamme's Bloodsport which came out a year earlier, even down to Bolo Yueng as the bad guy and the retrieval of a belt/headband. I see the cityscape training runs as very reminiscent of "Rocky." Actually, the acting was probably better than most of the genre and there are some great thugs being beat up on about three occassions. I would have liked it better if they had resolved that issue before the end of the movie.

The one thing I did find interesting was the complete Naihanchi Shodan Kata (Japanese version is Tekki Shodan) done by the main character on the top of a hillside looking out over the city. And the contrast between the bad guy's wonderful training facilities and the good guy's traditional tools is a good message, showing how hard work overcomes good facilities.

My biggest gripe is the amount of devastation absorbed by the characters in the final fight without dying!