So did you watch "Bloodsport" and think, this is good but what it really needs is for all the major roles to be played by women? Enter "Lady Bloodfight," a film about a bunch of women from around the world in a martial arts competition and it borrows from every Jean Claude Van Damme movie and every rip off of a Van Damme movie ever made. It is also about as mediocre as one. I wouldn't call this movie bad in the traditional bad movie sense so much as it's kind of lazy and a kind of enjoyable. Keith said it best when he summed the experience up as, "Not as bad as a good movie, but not as good as a bad movie." We didn't make the mistake of watching a good movie, but it wasn't funny enough to be a bad movie. If you want ladies in a bloodfight, it will give you ladies in a bloodfight.
The film centers around these two Chinese women who were enemies who fought in a kumite (literally "sparring"; the name of the competition) and tied. They were given the chance to either split the prize money or train apprentices to fight on their behalves. They chose apprentices. One of the women is very spiritual and ends up running into an American girl, hilariously named Jane Jones, who fought off some muggers. The girl wanted to fight in the kumite anyway because her dad disappeared during a competition 18 years ago, but she initially denies the offer. The woman proves her training ability by . . . bringing a dead bird back to life. The other woman ends up training a girl who broke into her dojo to steal her sword and her style is a bit more brutal and merciless. We get a long series of montages of the two pairs training with calm, spiritual training versus harshness.
At the kumite we are introduced to a friendly Aussie girl who get brutally murdered in a fight with a psychotic Russian girl with prison tattoos and a bunch of other people we don't really see. We also get a shower room scene because this film was obviously directed by a man. The subplot about Jane's father comes up again when a sketchy dude with a mustache and a gold chain talks to her about money and it becomes clear that he 1. killed her father to rig that kumite 2. killed the brother of one of the Chinese women who was the fiancé of the other, causing their riff in the first place and 3. wants to kill Jane too in order to rig this kumite. In the final showdown between the two apprentices, his crimes are revealed and Jane wins the fight, which I guess is supposed to be some kind of proof that tranquility beats anger or something. And the two women become friends again. And Jane sees the ghost of her father and it's silly.
Spoon Rating: 2*
*This rating is contingent on the fact that the film lacked unintentional comedy with some small exceptions. The movie itself was neither good nor bad.
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