Bloodmatch

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.

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.

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.

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-