Bloodfist 2050 Review [Spoilers]

If you ever wondered what a Skinemax produced tournament fighter movie would be like, wonder no more.

After watching Riki Oh, one of the most over-the-top gorefest martial arts movies I've ever seen( and I've seen Raid 1 and 2), it only seemed fitting to keep diving into the realm of kung fu shlock and to that end we have Bloodfist 2050 also known as Street Fighter 2050.

There have been eight other Bloodfist movies (I've seen none of them) which all starred Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and at least featured another real life martial artist in Billy Blanks. However, Bloodfist 2050 gives us a cast that lets you know right away what kind of movie this will be. The film stars Matt Mullins, who is a real martial artist, but also stars Glen Meadows and Beverly Lynne, both softcore porn actors (married also) who's filmography include Maximum Thrust, Delta, Delta, Die and The Devil Wears Nada. Yeah it's that kind of movie.

The first fifteen minutes make absolutely no sense. There's a massive gun battle followed by a Mad Max rip-off high-speed chase (with some really bad explosion effects), then a Warriors-like gang brawl breaks out, and next we're in the "Bloodfist" tournament. None of what I just described had any exposition,o r dialogue. I had no clue who the main character was.

We finally meet Alex (Mullins) who's come to distopian Los Angeles to find out who murdered his brother. It's essentially the movie Kickboxer except the main character is already a good fighter. Alex meets two of his brother's acquaintances, Randy (Meadows) a Bloodfist fighter and his brother's best friend, and Nadia, his stripper ex girlfriend (Lynne), who help him investigate the murder along with Detective Slick (Joe Sabatino).

The investigation leads them to the Bloodfist tournament, where Alex just starts questioning random fighters about his brother's murder. There's an obligatory "Chong-Li" character who seems shady and the stereotypical fighters: muay thai, karate, kung fu. The tournament fights were the only redeeming part of this movie; for how bad everything else is, these are done well. Most other fights in the movie are lazily choreographed and the sound effects don't match up to the action.

The rest of the movie plays out fairly standard from here on. Alex runs through the competition in the tournament, there's an obvious betrayal by a side character, crappy final fight, and Alex walks off into the sunset with closure, his tournament money, and his stripper girlfriend.

I waited until now to mention the strangest and most boring thing about this movie, because it's not something you normally gripe about from action movie. It's pretty much a given in tournament fighting movies you'll get some gratuitous nudity, and we do get a strip tease scene in this movie... about five times. This movie is only 76 minutes long and feels like it was spliced together from a softcore porn and and a Kickboxer rip-off that was never released. I've never seen an action movie that made me bored of boobs; this one did it.

So would I recommend this movie?

Even as B-Movies go this one was pretty garbage. The film quality is terrible (made in 2005, looks like 1995), sound effects are cheap, the music (when there is music) is bizarre and probably public domain tracks. It does have its hilarious moments, and a few good action spots, but not enough. Unless you want to watch Kickboxer and Girls Gone Wild without changing the channel, I'd stay away from Bloodfist 2050.

3/10