Bloodfight

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To say that this movie is a bit of a rip off of Bloodsport is an understatement -- Bolo Yeung's character even has the same name. The story has down-and-out fighter Kurata Yasuaki training Simon Yam for a "world martial arts tournament" (which of course takes place in some dingy basement), where he is beaten to a pulp by Bolo (who sports the worst-looking fake tattoos ever). Kurata starts boozing it up for a while, but then sees the light and begins training for the next tournament. If you can't guess how this movie ends, then please promptly smack yourself in the head. Really, the only reason to even consider watching this dreck is to see how Simon Yam fares with acting in English and doing kung fu. Sadly, as good of an actor as Simon is, his work here makes some of Steven Segal's look Shakespearenan by comparison. The final fight between Kurata and Bolo is admittedly pretty decent, but it's too little, too late. Don't waste your time with this stinker.

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.

At the heels of Bloodsport, director Shuji Goto snagged the formidable Bolo Yeung, attempting to capitalize on that film's success for his similarly titled, Bloodfight. The plot echoes Rocky IV as retired world champion martial artist, Masahiro Kai(Yasuaki Kurata), now the trainer of a fledgling gym, prepares for his main event fight against Chang Lee(Bolo Yeung), the one responsible for the murder of a former pupil, Ryu Tenmei(..a really young Simon Yam). Kai watched as Ryu battled against a group of bullying punks, led by Stuart Smith, seeing a possible champion-in-the-making, hoping to take him under his wing. At first Ryu resists, instead concerned with a career in basketball..that is until he has another altercation with the punks, left battered and bruised. To the dismay of girlfriend Milly, Ryu will abandon his potential basketball career, working hard with new trainer Kai, preparing for a tournament, in the hopes of becoming world champion. Ryu does indeed work his way through opponents, squaring off with Lee, but it doesn't fair well, and one snapped neck leads Kai into a drunken state, agonizing over the loss of his student, who was in over his head. In a publicity event, Kai agrees to enter the world championship tournament, setting up the main event between himself and Chang Lee. Undermined perhaps by the middle portion which gets bogged down in unraveling why Kai is awaiting his battle with Lee, Bloodfight, come hell or high water, is gonna place special emphasis on the characters and their story. It opens as if it might be a pure fight film, sacrificing story for bloody violence, but once the flashback story begins, the film at times grinds at a slow pace, with an exciting action sequence popping up here and there. The film follows the same "training regimen" scene from Rocky IV, as Kai prepares in the most difficult conditions / ways while Chang Lee works out in the comforts of a gym, with the finest equipment. While I personally wanted more of Yeung destroying opposition, Bloodfight is more concerned with the dynamic of trainer and student, how this relationship dictates the emotional level of the finale. The film establishes the main aggressors as the gang of cruel interlopers who attack innocent people and street vendors in the city just for kicks, with others having to put them in their place from time to time(..like a young woman defending her mother and sister, Ryu protecting his girlfriend, or Kai, wallowing in misery, who annihilates them even though he's drunk out of his gourd). The fight scenes are quite entertaining with the fighters flying through the air(..these moments are obviously choreographed fantasy, but enjoyable just the same, even if they are fictional acts of agility), swapping blows, with the usual assortment of odd-looking contestants and interesting finishes. The film allows Yeung, who is quite a physical specimen, to look really good, his fight against Yam incredibly hard to watch as his Chung Lee just obliterates the kid, showing no mercy, actually boozed up before the fight even begins. His closing fight with Kurata is worth the wait, and, again, Yeung, for a good while, just bashes and pummels his opponent. The problem is getting to these scenes, the dearth of story taking precedence over the fights. The film was shot in English, before the tolerance of subtitles, hoping to gain interest from Western audiences, I suppose. The Hong Kong locations are always a plus and I think Kurata does fine in the lead. Yeung is certainly menacing enough, even though his role doesn't differ much from others we are accustomed to.

Here's a cheap Japanese knock-off of the Van Damme "classic" BLOODSPORT, except made with only a fraction of the budget and skill. This boring, muddled film actually only contains about fifteen minutes of footage in the ring, as it were. The rest is taken up with a modern, realist drama charting the life and times of tough fight promoter Yasuaki Kurate as Kai, a middled-aged Japanese karate warrior who enjoys training new warriors to fight against the champ of the ring, Chang Lee. We get to watch Kai train, fight with his wife and lose her, become a hopeless drunk, and then finally enter the ring himself to take on Chang Lee. It's not as interesting as it sounds, and contains hardly any action – certainly not enough for a film with the promising title BLOODFIGHT. The on-the-street camera approach quickly becomes tiring, especially as there are no sympathetic actors to engage with along the way. Kurate does seem to be a halfway decent performer but his sullen, monosyllabic lead doesn't give him much opportunity to shine. The first half of the film is a pointless time-wasting exercise dealing with a moronic gang of street thugs, led by the insolent Stuart Smith (hilariously misspelt as Stuart Smita in the credits). You may remember Smith from the likes of NINJA HUNT and other ultra-cheap cut-and-paste ninja epics of the '80s; BLOODFIGHT appears to be his genre swansong but the film isn't any better than his earlier work. A young Simon Lam, possibly the most famous of the cast, doesn't fare any better with his heavy emoting. Lam later made a name for himself with gangster films and the heroic bloodshed genre but he's as bad here as the rest. Bolo Yeung is the only one to come out of it with some dignity, although he's just as much laughable here as he is scary. The film is poorly made throughout, shot in English (and in Hong Kong) with a script that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The fight sequences are typically poorly shot, aside from a few choice battles in the last half hour of the film. The only good thing in the whole movie is the last match between Kurate and Yeung, an impossibly long slug-fest to the death, which is, as the title suggests, pretty bloody. It's just a shame that the rest of the movie doesn't carry on in the same mould, instead alternating between mindless bizarre moments and stultifying boredom. Give this one a miss and check out the Van Damme film instead.

For some strange reason, I like this movie. I's partly a spoof of _Bloodsport_ and partly your typical Hong Kong movie. The martial arts tournament is named the "Free Fighting Tournament," and Bolo Yeung plays basically the same character that he did in _Bloodsport_ (the name is spelled Chang Lee here). The fights are downright weird: a sumo wrestler smothers his opponent by squatting on his face; an Indian fighter who must be seven feet tall and who wears high-top sneakers accidentally breaks a floodlight with a high kick and tells the stage people, "Up, up, up"; a monkey-style kung fu fighter rolls around on the mat without making much attempt at fighting, then rips a tuft of hair off the Indian fighter's chest (as Bruce Lee did to Chuck Norris in _Return of the Dragon_). As if that wasn't bizarre enough, the master wanders around Hong Kong, tangling with some American punks (who have a very familiar obscene phrase spray-painted on their jeep). Even though _Bloodfight_ is really just your typical Hong Kong chopsocky flick, I am fascinated by it, maybe because I have an interest in anything Asian. Fans of Jackie Chan should give it a shot, as well as anyone who likes Simon Yam (who has worked with John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat in other films).

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!

As a kid, we considered this movie as one of the funniest things ever, and it was a neighborhood sensation for about half a Summer. Essentially a direct (and abysmal) clone of "Bloodsport," "Bloodfight" was made the same year, and features the same bad guy: Bolo Yeung. (Who, strangely enough, plays the same CHARACTER as he did in "Bloodsport"). I hadn't seen this movie in 15-years and was pleased to discover that it remains as cheesetastic as my memories....Anyway, the movie is dreadful, almost continuously incoherent rubbish, but has its moments as an unintentional comedy. The acting is TERRIBLE, and some of the film's more dramatic sequences are laugh out loud funny. (Some segments had me questioning whether the lameness was intentional, but I don't think it is). There are some definite pacing problems, and the editing is so bad that the story is essentially broken and unnavigable, but there are a few pretty classic parts. If you appreciate the sublime comfort of late-vintage, bottom-of-the-barrel Hong Kong actioners, and need an easy one to laugh at, this one's OK. You'll have to fast-forward through some parts, but just know there is funny in here, friends. LONG LIVE THE KUMATE! ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet