Lady Bloodfight (2016)

Lady Bloodfight (2016)

Starring: Amy Johnston, Muriel Hofmann, Jenny Wu, Kathy Wu Jia-Xing, Jet Tranter, Ng May-Ling, Rosemary Vandenbroucke, Lisa Cheng Lai-Sho, Ho Wing-Yin, Kirt Kishita

Director: Chris Nahon

Action Director: Xiong Xin Xin

Lady Bloodfight was first announced in early 2015. However, much like the Kickboxer reboot, there was a large gulf from the original plans for the movie and what we finally got. Like Kickboxer, this was meant to be a remake/reboot of a Jean-Claude Van Damme classic, in this case, Bloodsport. Indeed, the original title of the project was Lady Bloodsport and would focus on an all-female Kumite competition set (once again) in Hong Kong. Producing the picture would be HK cinema expert Bey Logan’s B&E Productions, with assistance from Kathryn Bigelow’s Voltage Pictures, thus making it a HK/US co-production.

As these things go, there were some casting hopefuls that did not pan out in the final product. For one, Selina Lo (Time Rush and Triple Threat) was supposed to play the main protagonist. According to the IMDB, producer-writer Bey Logan wanted more recognizable faces like Shu Qi and Maggie Q in the film. By the time that filming started about a year and a half after the project’s announcement, the title had been changed from Lady Bloodsport to Lady Bloodfight, thus bringing to mind the 1989 Japanese film starring Yasuaki Kurata. 

Instead of Selina Lo, up-and-coming Hollywood stuntwoman Amy Johnston was brought onboard as the main heroine. French director Chris Nahon, director of Kiss of the Dragon and Blood: The Last Vampire, signed on to direct. And the fight action was put in the hands of Xiong Xin Xin, who had done great work choreographing a female protagonist in Coweb. There was enough potential here that Lady Bloodfight could be something special.

But…

The movie opens in 2010/2011, kicking off with the final fight of the Kumite—despite the title change, the story is still ostensibly linked to the Bloodsport franchise. The final two combatants are Shu (Muriel Hoffman, of Covert Operation and “Dream Defenders”), a Wudan stylist, and Wai (Kathy Wu, of “Bosch: Legacy” and “Heroic Journey of Ne Zha”), a Shaolin stylist. The two fight to a standstill and the fight is declared a tie by the judge, the now-female head of the Black Dragon Association (Cynthia Ho). The two refuse to share the final fight purse and the Black Dragon leader tells them to each find a disciple and train her for the next Kumite.

Four years later, we meet Jane Jones (Amy Johston, of Accident Man and Female Fight Squad), a young waitress living in Sydney. After she gets fired for beating up an asshole customer—the SOB had it coming to him, to be honest—she gets jumped in the car garage. She comes out victor, but ultimately decides to leave home and head to Hong Kong. You see, she has been raised largely by her alcoholic smoker of a mom after her dad, a martial artist, disappeared in Hong Kong years earlier. Anyway, she gets jumped by a gang who preys on tourists and is rescued at the last moment by Shu, who has been hanging out at a (rundown) Wudan temple hoping to find a successor. Shu convinces Jane to train under her, although she is reluctant to let Jane participate in the Kumite. Wasn’t that the entire point of finding a disciple in the first place?

Meanwhile, a young martial artist named Ling (Jenny Wu) visits a school in Kowloon run by Wai. Ling challenges one of Wai’s students and promptly beats her down without breaking a sweat. Wai offers to train her for the Kumite, but the Ling initially refuses. That is, until she tries to break into the school and steal Wai’s prized sword (reminiscent of the original Bloodsport). Wai duels with her and bests her, ultimately convincing her to represent her in the Kumite.

Both women train until it’s time for the competition, at which point the film progresses like your average martial arts tournament film. Jane quickly befriends a nice girl named Cassidy (Jet Trenter, who was attached to the movie since its inception). There is a super-buff bitch fighter named Svietta (Ng May-Ling, of The Suicide Squad and Debt Collectors). The Black Dragon Association make a big deal out of a white girl representing a Chinese kung fu school. And there is a shady better, Mr. Sang, who may or may not be associated with not only Jane’s dad’s disappearance, but the rivalry between Shu and Wai as well.

According to the IMDB, Lady Bloodfight cost about ten million dollars to make (and made a paltry thirteen thousand dollars from limited theatrical releases—maybe it was more successful on DVD). Unless movie production costs have become extremely inflated—which they have, but this was shot in Asia, so it should have been a little cheaper—I do not know where the money went. Most of the Kumite fights are filmed at a shipyard between a bunch of large containers. There are only a dozen or so people watching the fights at a given time. 

I know that building a tournament set for the Kumite, complete with bleachers, may not have been possible, but surely they could have spent more money on extras to play spectators. A hundred some-odd spectators betting the big bucks would make it believable that the Kumite could be self-sustaining institution. Only a few rich businessmen and no sign of video recording to post the Kumite on the Internet make me wonder how the Black Dragon Society keeps itself afloat.

(Note: I had a similar feeling watching The Slender Man recently, which makes me wonder just how many movies these days are fronts for money laundering.)

There are about sixteen female fighters, but we only get to see a few of them actually fighting. Half-French actress Rosemary Vandenbroucke (Martial Angels) gets introduced as Brazilian capoeira fighter, but then does not actually fight onscreen. Sixteen fighters mean eight fights in the first round, four in the second, two semi-final matches, and then the final championship. The Quest was able to show us a tournament with the same set-up in its entirety, even if a few fights were over in a few punches. Bloodsport gave us an even larger roster, although the progression of the tournament did not always make sense, given the number of fights that Van Damme’s Frank Dux ultimately participated in. So yeah, the lack of showing the tournament in its entirety is very disappointing to me. The movie does give us a tournament montage, but without a faux-“Eye of the Tiger” song like “Fight to Survive” playing in the background, it doesn’t work that well.

Personally, I was quite disappointed with the action. Xiong Xin Xin had done great work in Coweb and there is no reason that he couldn’t have repeated the work he did there. Most of the women are trained martial artists and/or stuntwomen. There is even a bit of weapons work as the second round of the Kumite is completely weapons based, although the dialog refers to everything as a “sword”—medium-handled assault blades, Butterfly swords, and dao (saber, or broadsword). Amy Johnston picks up a huge horse-chopping blade for her fight against a woman wielding the kwan do, although we never saw her training with that weapon during her training sequence. We also see Johnston learn baguazhang from Shu, but she doesn’t use it a lot in her fights: mainly just generic modern kickboxing.

The choreography has its moments, but the actresses can’t seem to sell the impact of the fights. Maybe it’s the lack of exaggerated sound design. But it’s probably intrusive camerawork and confusing editing, the latter of which was overseen by director Chris Nahon himself. In an interview about Kiss of the Dragon, the late Corey Yuen stated that Chris Nahon liked doing handheld camerawork, but it doesn’t work here. Nahon tries to sell the impact by using A LOT of blood—the women bleed heavily after taking one or two punches to the face—but the moves themselves don’t convince. I’m told that this is at least better than Raze (starring stuntwoman Zoë Bell and featuring Amy in a smaller role) and Female Fight Squad, and it’s miles ahead of Fight Valley. But like Kickboxer: Vengeance, you’re really better off just watching the 80s movie that inspired this.