Bloodmatch

Now I do recall seeing this film a long time ago, but I was beginning to forget the absolute awesome cheese this flick brought to my eyes, so of course, like any action junkie, I watched this film again. Bloodmatch (released a couple years after Cyborg) stars Thom Mathews as Brick Bardo, a man on a mission to avenge his dead brother.

In my eyes this is a strange mix of Kickboxer and Bloodfist, with an additional revenge plot that comes along for the ride. Despite the obvious budget and not-so-competent dialogue, Bloodmatch is definitely full of action scenes from start to finish. (Remember those "repeat hits" in films where a punch for example is shown three times, with three different angles? Pyun takes this and turns it up to 11.)

Besides the action, the rest of the cast has some notable action stars alongside the main star- this includes Andy Sidaris regular Hope Marie Carlton, legend Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, Thunderwolf, Dale Jacoby, and even Michel Qissi.

In conclusion, is this Bloodsport? No. Is it a truly good movie? No. But does it hold itself up with true 90s cheese that can't be replicated? Hell yes.

Final rating is a 6/10.. I recommend watching if you're into cheesy or crappy movies, and don't act like a wannabe Roger Ebert.

Brick Bardo (Thom Mathews) kidnaps four world-class kickboxers who may have killed his brother and takes them to an abandoned arena in Las Vegas where he plans to fight them all to the death in front of each other, until either one of them kills him or one of them is revealed as his brother's murderer. It was written by K. Hannah and directed by Albert Pyun (The Sword & The Sorcerer / Cyborg), and co stars Benny "The Jet" Urquidez (who choreographed the fights), Hope Marie Carlton, Dale Jacoby and Thunderwolf. Marianne Taylor is Max who helps Brick out and appears naked in a sex scene. There's way too many filler scenes and lots of poor dialogue (that's hard to hear over the background music) in this movie that's just too talky and doesn't even deliver on the fight scenes.

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.

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)

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-