8 August 2017. Directed and written by males, this female version of the typical martial arts movie has some nice scenes, but remains a bit too black and white, typical for many male derived movies. The good guys (females) and bad guys (males) are depicted in their literally white and black clothing and along with their white and black persona. Yet by the end of the movie, the explanation of the emotional dichotomy employed along with it being the twist in the movie while helping to support the black and white depiction, comes too late to help soften the "typical" feeling of the movie.

Much of the martial arts action is quite fascinating, especially with its diversity. It's odd though how the level of lethality of the means used in subsequent rounds isn't consistently more intense. Some of the action scenes are given too short of movie time, others are truly captivating. More time could have been given to some of the other martial art contestants, mainly because of how a number of the opening scene sequences revealed suggested such characters would play a little greater role later in the movie then that did.

Some nice touches come from eventually the more layered character depiction of the black antagonistic contestant as well as more of the Karate Kid (1984) playfulness as well as its use of some of that movie's themes but in a more mature and coming of age, grown up fashion. If the movie had been directed and written by females, the movie might have been much, much better, but the males who did undertake this project did a decent job of it.

The film opens with two women fighting in the Kumite (Ku-ma-ta) in Hong Kong to a draw. One is in black and the other in white showing off some simple Yin-Yang. The woman in black refuses to split the prize so the two fighters are to train someone for the 435th event five years later. We see various street tough girls around the world get invitations and then we see Jane (Amy Johnston) a PBR drinking waitress harassed by rude customers. Who else in the world is tougher? She leaves her waitress job and takes her skills to Hong Kong to compete. Okay, she has some formal training and an ulterior motive which we discover later as an attempt to create a plot outside of women beating each other up. After all, who wants to just watch cat fights? In Hong Kong we see the woman in black train the Hong Kong version of Harley Quinn (Muriel Hofmann). Jane, our Barbie doll, trains with the woman in white, who she once refers to as Mrs. Miyagi. Yes there are gross similarities to "The Karate Kid." The training period which makes up so many fight films showing unorthodox training techniques that figure in later on, was relatively brief .

The film has some ties to real life. In the film Jane was trained by her father, Amy was trained by her father David Johnston. Amy was also a stunt double in "Suicide Squad" and is Scarlett Johansson's stunt double.

Mayling Ng, martial arts fighter and bikini contestant is also in the film. There are a lot of hard bodies in locker room scenes in various stages of dress. Blood and killing.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

LADY BLOODFIGHT is an independent Hong Kong martial arts movie, starring nobody you ever heard of and borrowing the plot from the old Van Damme flick BLOODSPORT, giving it a gender twist in the process. This time around, a blonde Westerner (played by stuntwoman Amy Johnston, who previously appeared in RAZE) is kidnapped by thugs and forced to fight other women in the Kumite, a mythical fighting tournament in which opponents battle to the death. What follows is entirely ordinary, playing out on a low budget just as you'd expect. The acting rathers from wooden to cheesy and there's a notable emphasis on titillation, with all of the combatants forced to strip down before they fight. Films like this live or die based on their action chorography, and the fights are quite watchable here, slick and fast-paced. Not, perhaps, top-tier, though, which leaves LADY BLOODFIGHT an average film overall.