Bloodmatch

Five years ago, one of the world's greatest kickboxers killed Thom Mathews' brother. Someone had been fixing matches and he had to die to cover up the secret. Now Mathews is tacking them down and beating them to death to figure it out, as one does.

All right, it's a dumb plot, and the lines are dumb. People who go to see this sort of movie don't go for the Shakespearean tragedies and wild language, any more than I look at Fred Astaire movies for the Edward Everett Horton soliloquies. So how's the fight choreography? Lousy: chopped up, moving camera, every kick is cut ..... and not while moving, but between, screaming that this is a patched-together cut. True, ex-Playboy Playmate Hope Marie Carlton is present. It's the only movie I've seen with her in which she does not take off her clothes. I guess at 24, she was showing her age.

When it was released back in '91, I remember watching the start a few times, my image, two men running in the desert heat, in profile, or was it more than two, and not continuing to watch it. When watching it last week, the next tortuous "when will it end?" scene, I remenber watching too, 30 years ago. Pre watch this time, I the painted this off as an entertaning, average quality watch, familiar to the Kickboxers, Wrong Bets, BloodSports, just without Van Damne. Sadly, what I found here, was a rude awakening. The films just mentioned, sequels and all, are better than Bloodmatch. This is even a low for Pyun. I can't believe he made this. This film is a joke. Horrific acting, yeah, you heard it. Horrific. Stilted, wooden, no feeling, laughable, unbelievable, atrocious, amateur, as is the whole affair here. What's tragic here, was the different, original, and interesting story, marred by a bad script, and some of the worst acting I've ever seen. One of the beefcake villains, was so bad, I had to slap myself in the face, and then some to get a reality check. Stopping about half way, I watched the rest of Bloodmatch the next day. As soon as I put the video on, straight away, the same horrific acting took straight up again. It hurts me, to explain the impressive story, because of what could of been, so I'm not gonna. The movie's ruined more by the stupid twist, adding to the amateur attributes.

All through "Bloodmatch," I was like, that main actor looks so familiar. And then I looked him up after the movie and realized he's Tommy Jarvis from "Friday the 13th Part VI." When the most famous actor in a movie is most known for the sixth episode in a slasher film franchise, that tells you something right there about the quality of the movie you're watching.

"Bloodmatch" is so funereally paced and set to such an incongruous, droning score, that it unfortunately is more boring than bad movie good. I could summarize the plot, but....ha! Ha!.....why? It might be the most monotonously structured movie I've ever seen. There's a twist ending I think, but since the plot devolves into the incomprehensible, it might just be a normal ending to a plot that doesn't make any sense in the first place. I'm not really sure, and trust me, this movie is not worth the mental energy required to figure out what happens.

And this also has to be one of the darkest movies I've ever seen. I don't mean in tone or subject matter -- I mean it's literally so dark you can't see what's happening half the time. It's like the budget was so small that they couldn't afford enough lights. Tip to the filmmakers -- if you have to cut some things for budget reasons, start with a couple of the terrible actors before you start cutting things like lighting. Hey, it would have reduced the amount of plot and made your film shorter to boot. That's a win for everybody!

Grade: D-

Thom Mathews stars as Brick Bardo, a PO'd kickboxer looking to avenge the murder of his brother and deal out vengeance to the four fighters responsible, however he doesn't know who is the one at fault so he decides to kill them all anyway. Of course along the way lots of martial arts action ensues. Bloodmatch if anything else ranks as one of the cheapest movies made in the 1990's. Bloodmatch has four instances where it takes place outside of the fight arena. (Which itself looks as if it was slapped together one night, when Pyun realized he had an extra week to use the arena from Kickboxer 2, which it resembles) There is some good fight sequences but generally there is no interest in the characters and the acting is pretty bad. Thom Mathews gives an outrageously terrible performance but still acts circles around what has to be the worst actors i've seen since high school. Also the movie peaks early with a cool chase and torture sequence which is cool but then fades into the clichéd plot involving his brother. Also of note is that our hero kickboxer kidnaps little kids in order to force their parent to fight. That is a novelty. Also there is a twist ending which makes no sense what so ever and forced me to subtract a point from it's rating out of 10.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

With Benny "The Jet" Urquidez filming the fight scenes and playing a part in the movie, I expected more. I've seen him do some great things in other films, but this one left me wondering. It's a revenge film filled with great martial artists, but it sure didn't turn out to be a great film. Very few of the actors/actresses could actually act and the fighting left a lot to be desired. There were a few good fight scenes, but overall this strange, low-budget effort fell short. See it only if you can't sleep. Rating 5/10