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(More customer reviews)Wait, one more stupid line from the movie. "Ken were cops, we don't do this".
First off if you do not like martial arts movies then this will not be worth your time. If you love Jean Claude Van Damme and all the great b-action movies like 'No Retreat, No Surrender' then you will absolutely love this flick and it will become an instant classic for you. It is actually from the same film company that discovered Jean Claude and did all the 'No Retreat, No Surrender' movies. The owner of the Seasonal Film Company(Ng See-Yuen)actually discovered old school stars like Jackie Chan and Hwang Jang Lee and produced their first successful movies. So when I saw Tony Leung Siu Hung and Ng's name on the back of the box, I had to have it. VERY rarely are American martial arts movies good. Sometimes they end up being a great movie but the fight scenes will be limited and only average. 'Bloodmoon' is the exact reverse. It has spectacular fight scenes, it's badly directed, and it's filled with enough cheese to at least laugh at the stupidness of it sometimes. There is even that part where they go to a strip bar and we get to see surgically enhanced women.
The movie stars out by ripping off 'Beverly Hills Cop' with an Eddie Murphy clone playing the cop. The only thing that makes this character different from Eddie Murphy is that he loves kung fu. This is a down point of the movie since he is certainly not the worst actor but the script could not get any worse. The really good thing though is that he can seriously fight. I thought it was a stunt double at first glance since his first fight is in the dark, but even in the light this guy was doing some amazingly tough choreographed fight scenes. One is a 3 on 1 fight with the killer. If they did double for him at all they fooled me. Then there is a woman fighter who is very good and you will for sure notice the stunt doubling for her. You have to watch for when Rob Van Damme(a wrestler) gets thrown through a window, they show a close up of his double for about 5 seconds. Personally, it was my favorite part of the movie. So Gary Daniels joins this unfunny Eddie Murphy type of cop to find a killer. This guy goes around killing a bunch of tough people. Luckily he doesn't just kill quickly but challenges them and we get these amazing fights scenes. The first fight was awesome but when he stuck his fingers into the guys chest to kill him, I thought for sure this movie would end up being a waste of time. Then you have that one part where the killer posts his murders on the internet and they try to track him down. Of course now the computer geek is saying "OK, he's in Bejing, wait, he's in Berlin, no, he's in Moscow". This may sound like a bad movie and it is but the amount of fights and the quality of them is what makes it good. All great fights and most of them are extended going 5 minutes or so. For a die-hard martial arts movie fan like me it just does not get better than this. The fights are brutal and I have to say that they are some of the best I have seen in a while. There is unfortunately a bit of wirework with the wires clearly seen but that is to be expected from a movie of this type of budget.
Now like all great martial arts movies every actor needs to be somebody who actually looks good fighting on screen and the villian needs to standout as the baddest mother on the block. Darren Shahlavi gets the job done nicely and his steel tipped boots are a nice touch. There is actually metal on the whole bottom of his boots and up the whole heel. He really gets to show off his sklls and how many great kicks he has.
Now I will say it once more so people don't get confused by my 4 star rating. This movie is a cheesy cop drama with a few good comic moments and it has some truly great fight scenes. So it is not for everyone and I warn you all that this movie has one of the stupidest endings of all time. "Ha ha ha ha, this is the endgame Ken". No not the ending sequence fights and Gary Daniel's race to save his family, that was bad, but the very last moment of the movie. It is the finest of cheese that you will ever find in a film.
I have to once again mention how great the fighting was and how great of a job that director/action director Tony Leung Siu Hung did. His choreography and editing of the fights is about as good as it gets. Now I just have to see the other American martial arts movie he directed which is called 'Superfights' and my life will be complete. Seriously, the movie is called Superfights.
I will warn you right now that this DVD from the Weinstein Company is sub-standard. Big surprise huh? Well of course it is not a surprise. These are the same people that edited down every Jet Li and Jackie Chan movie and not only cut it up but never offered their DVD's in the original Asian language. So luckily this is actually an American movie and we don't have to bother with the bad dubbing, just the bad acting. The DVD is presented in full screen and the picture quality is average. The first 2 fights were a bit blurry but it seems to clear up from there. Good sound quality.
There are no special features except filmographies.
One more bad line-"Don't worry honey, daddy's gonna save us".
Just one more line I promise. It does not have anything to do with the movie but you'd think that it would-"Did you notice there's blood on the moon tonight?" the masked killer asks in a dark voice as he has his leg extended in the air showing off his devastating martial arts skills.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Bloodmoon (1997)
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