Lady Bloodfight is a take on Bloodsport, only with female fighters. In this case, two rivals, Wai (Kathy Wu) and Shu (Muriel Hofman) fight to a draw in the previous tourney, so to claim victory, they need to train new fighters to win in their stead for the next one. Wai starts by training a Ling (Jenny Wu), thief who broke into her dojo, and then Shu follows by training Jane (Amy Johnston), an American from Pittsburgh who has come to Hong Kong to find out what happened to her father when he came to compete 18 years ago. Will one of these women prevail?
This is the real deal. The fights are great, it's well-shot, well-acted, it just all works the way you'd want it to. It's directed by Chris Nahon of Kiss of the Dragon fame, and written by Bey Logan of The Medallion and White Tiger fame. Yes, the plot is a bit derivative, but it has some unique elements that give it enough for me, especially when you pair it with the action and performances. I think Amy Johnston is set up to be the hero, and it does work from that perspective; but the rivalry between Wai and Shu is prominent as well; and I think the Ling character was compelling too, making it a shame we didn't get more of her, but I also understood to get us down to 100 minutes we needed to cut things somewhere. Another thing that could've been cut was the whole conflict between Jane and Shu, as it felt a bit contrived, like conflict for the sake of conflict, and for a fight movie I don't know that we really needed it--though it did give us a great scene between Ling and Jane in the aftermath that was really good. Even that complaint is a small one, because overall this worked, and I really enjoyed it.
This is now three Amy Johnston films so far on the site, and in each one she's given a great performance. The numbers aren't quite there yet, but when you think about how a Mimi Lesseos only has five films where she was the lead, Johnston could be on her way to being one of the top female action stars, especially in the DTV realm. After Rothrock, there's a large drop down to names like Kathleen Kinmont, but Amy Johnston should have more films where she's the lead than Kinmont did. Zoe Bell is another one that I need to catch up on, and in looking at her CV, she has more stuff I could review on the site than Johnston does. Either way, the potential is there for Johnston to be among those names, especially with the roles she's had so far. She has those action lead qualities that make us want to see what she has coming next, so hopefully we keep getting stuff like this from here--and if we do, it's going to be exciting to follow her growth. One thing that could possibly derail her: getting cancelled like Gina Carano did. Please Amy, we implore you, don't tweet any dumb stuff!
With men as the action leads, the bonds that characters form are in more of a bro vein. "Thanks for havin' my six man." "Let's grab a beer and get into a bar fight." "They killed my bro, time for a dysfunctionally masculine cry, followed by a vengeance mission." With women though, emotions are considered okay, and if the characters form more of an emotional bond, like Johnston and Hofman form as Hofman is training her, we as the audience are more okay with it--which shouldn't be the case, we should be okay with dudes doing that too. Anyway, I liked how they used the bond Johnston and Hofman were forming to juxtapose with how Kathy Wu's character was training Jenny Wu, where Kathy was stricter and harsher. The problem was, with harsher one, we don't get enough development of Jenny Wu's character, in part because we couldn't, but it made the juxtaposition less complete; but even bigger, when Hofman's character gets upset with Johnston after she takes out a gang of guys who mugged her earlier in the film, it also doesn't fit with the emotional bond Hofman and Johnston have formed. To make it work, they needed to play more into why Hofman's character would've been hurt by what Johnston's did--maybe go back to what happened in the past between Hofman and Wu. It's that thing where action filmmakers are trying new things when they have women in the lead, but ultimately they need to fall back on old male-lead tropes. Hopefully as time goes on they'll be able to break away from them more. A great example getting out of those male-dominated cliches was Zoe Saldana's Colombiana.
Amy Johnston's lead was solid enough that we didn't have a Destro Effect, but I really liked Jenny Wu's Ling character, and I also liked how they used the harsh methods Kathy Wu's character employed to train her to create some ambiguity in Ling's motivation. In a different world, Ling would have been the hero of this movie, and maybe she has to fight her trainer, Wai, in the finale. That was another aspect of this that was different from other tournament fight films, there wasn't a Bolo Yeung or Michel Qissi looming at the end of it all. The closest we had was Mayling Ng's Svietta, who was great as the Tong Po-esque baddie, but with the construct of Wai and Shu needing to train fighters to win for them, Johnston had to fight Svietta earlier on. Maybe the better approach is if Ling and Johnston's Jane befriend each other, and Svietta is the evil looming in the finale. As an aside, I didn't realize this, but this is the third film for Ng on the site too, the other two being Acceleration and Debt Collectors. Hopefully we'll see her again, because she was also great here.
Finally, from a personal standpoint, this film features two cities I've always wanted to visit, Hong Kong and Pittsburgh. Obviously one is much further from me in Philadelphia than the other, but it's interesting how Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are connected--or not connected. My wife and I don't have a car or drive, so there is no driving option for us to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh for me, but that seems to be the best way to get there. There's really only one train a day that connects the two, and going west, that train gets to Pittsburgh in the evening and comes back to Philadelphia the next morning. So that means to do anything there, like catch a Pirates game, I'd need at least a two-night stay. You can also do the Megabus, which also only has one trip a day, so if I'm doing that the train's nicer than the bus; or Greyhound, which has more bus times, bit do I want to take a Greyhound just to say I've been to Pittsburgh? Compare that to Boston, which is roughly the same distance away, but has myriad train options, plus flights aren't as expensive either. You could make the point that the big difference between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh versus Philadelphia and Boston, is one of those two has one of the largest cities in the world between it. Fair enough, but I don't think you could find a similar situation in Europe where two large cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are connected by only one train trip a day. The answer is always "Americans just love their cars," but the Germans love their cars even more, and they have no problem connecting major cities with trains, and trains that are faster than traveling by car too.
Since I've spent a paragraph ranting about the lack of train travel outside the Northeast Corridor in the US, it's probably better to wrap this up. Here in the States this is available to stream on Prime, Plex, Pluto, and my favorite, Tubi. If you haven't seen it yet, it's time to make it happen, as this is a lot of fun, with some fantastic martial arts action. It's the great irony of America: tons of great content to stream for free, but you have to drive everywhere so you can't watch any of it on a long trip. Maybe Tubi, Netflix, Amazon, etc. should team up with Amtrak to get us more train service... sorry, I said I was done ranting...
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4327752
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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