This review is of the TV-14 edited version. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

Time for one of those action packed martial art films! Bloodfist has some good moments to be sure and while the action scenes aren’t quite as dynamic as a lot of the other action titles I’ve seen, they work well enough. The main problem here really just comes from the fact that the film tends to get distracted by other elements which are not even needed.

The movie starts with one guy preparing to throw a fight as expected but his opponent is just rubbing it in too much. This causes the fighter to stop holding back and he claims victory. Unfortunately the mafia don’t like that and so after he leaves the venue, drunk and out of sorts…he is quickly overwhelmed in a fight and murdered. We then cut to his brother Jake who finds out about this and decides to avenge him. The local cops are not very helpful but a guy named Kwong explains that there is a big tournament coming up and if Jake enters he will be able to fight the murderer.

Jake is already a strong fighter but is he really able to handle this? Kwong will train him but is not thrilled with Jake constantly getting distracted by all his flirting with Nancy. Kwong tells him time and time again that this will weaken Jake but he doesn’t care. Unfortunately this is easily the weakest part of the film. Jake is here to avenge his brother so it’s true that he really doesn’t have time to be messing around like this. Shouldn’t he be focused on training to the max and winning? Everything else can come in afterwards.

The romance scenes just drag on and on. Additionally the film is going for easy clicks with fanservice scenes that kept the TV censors pretty busy the whole time. These moments don’t add to the film at all and are clearly just here for those reasons. Once we get to the fights then at least there’s more to focus on. Now the film does get extremely predictable by this point. You know that Jake’s friend Baby is absolutely going to get wrecked in the fight but the film decides to go a little extra and make things rough for his girlfriend as well. The worst part is it’s partially Jake’s fault that she gets taken out when he jumps in to de-escalate things.

In this tournament nobody cares about murder or anything like that so it’s not like Chin Woo is disqualified or anything. It just reminds you how crazy all of the characters have to be to even think about entering this thing. You’re putting yourself in a position where the villain can legally torture you. Even if you’re absolutely fanatical about fighting this seems like a really bad idea to me. The film definitely does get rather violent during the matches. Not always in a bloody way to be honest but sometimes just with the explicit bone snapping and extra hits after the fight was already over.

You can definitely feel the pain there. Chin Woo is a very generic main villain though. The guy is strong and ruthless…but that’s about the only character traits to the guy. The film didn’t bother giving him more than that and I guess I don’t blame the title because there wouldn’t be much reason to do so. Most of the characters here are on the two dimensional side. They’re filling out classic character traits to keep the story moving. Nancy is basically just the love interest, Baby is the friend who will inevitably be crushed, Jake is the MC, etc.

The only one who actually has a lot of depth to him is Kwong. The film handles him really well and his role is bigger than you’d expect. He’s not just the old mentor who is super good at fighting and always ready to train a new fighter. This guy is very important and active in the story which was a good idea on the film’s part. I’d even go as far as to say that Kwong is a highlight in the title overall and helps to enhance the movie. You definitely couldn’t say that about just anyone.

Bloodfist also has a really good climax. I dare say that it even tops the actual final battle of the tournament both in choreography as well as location. It just feels like more of a true fight and I always like when the fighters take the battle out of the ring by the end. As I mentioned earlier, the fights aren’t exactly top tier despite the true skills of the actors. It doesn’t have the right camera angles and dynamics to take things to the next level. That said, they are still good fights and there is a good amount of them. If you take away the subplot romance and the extra fanservice scenes then this film would have actually been a good one.

There’s just no reason to go to the strip club and it’s a sign that the writers were not confident in their own abilities. I’d also argue that the writing holds things back a bit like Jake not always acting as urgently as he should be considering the stakes. So this will always be in the shadow of better fighting films like Mortal Kombat and Rocky. I don’t see this one quite becoming as well known or making a comeback. It was big enough to get a bunch of sequels of course but it’s not a true A tier contender.

Overall, If you like action and want to see a bunch of fights then you should check this one out. It is very straight forward about including a ton of action and what you see is what you get. It’s not trying to do anything fancy and the execution isn’t great but I could see it fitting the bill if you just want some action. Unfortunately for Bloodfist there are just way too many other action films to check out if I wanted a quality action film. So I have to give this one a thumbs down and keep it moving. We’ll see how the sequel fares.

Overall 4/10