Bloodmatch

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

Brick Bardo is on a revenge mission to take out the four fighters who set up his brother. The lead has no charisma or maybe he's not really the lead. The overall acting skill level is bad. There are plenty of fights but I couldn't tell you who's who. All I know is four forgettable names in the kill list. Everything else is a confused blur. This is a bad B-movie. It runs out of steam by the thirty minutes mark if not sooner. The movie should start with getting the four kidnapped and then Brick can give his exposition. The acting remains bad but the story gets a bit clearer if not more reasonable.

well well well.....

How could this movie fail?

with benny the jet, and a host of other talented kickboxers, this film was sure to be great......right...

(Sarcasm kicks in here)

It was

It was truly excellent

The best part was the story, with characters who did nothing for the whole movie except kick each other. And the kicking was great too, simply because of the fight editing. An experienced editor would show one kick when the actor did one kick but this editor made the fighting 5 times better by replaying all the punches and kicks 5 times. Pure genius. This way, he has achieved his goal of completely confusing the viewer (how is that possible in a fight scene), because you dont know whether or not the punches are replayed or the real thing. So, you might as well fast forward throught the fight scenes because they are too mentally taxing (trying to figure out who hits each other). Then you can watch the story in all its glory.

In my ignorance, i couldn't really follow the twisted plot, but it seems that billy's dad was killed in the desert, so now he can gather together all these kickboxers at random and get them into a ring, where he can proceed to kill all of them, even thought he knows they were innocent. This way, there is a lot of killing which makes no sense at all. This also gives the director an opportunity to throw in a sex scene. Great movie.

(Sarcasm stops here)

Crap movie. Why the hell did he kill all the people when he knew they were innocent? I thought he was the good guy!

3rd worst movie ever

After bloodsucking freaks and bloodfight (Notice how all the crap movies start with blood)

1/10

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.