Scattered thoughts about Lady Bloodfight:
1. I watched it because I wanted to see attractive women in action scenes. I got that.
2. The performers are clearly hired for their physical skills rather than their acting chops. The acting is fine--not spectacular, but good enough. Unfortunately, the director chose to present the fight scenes with choppy editing and that overdone Zack Snyder speed-ramping that should have died out quicker than brostep, so you get the feeling you're never really seeing the full extent of what these women can do.
3. The tone is wildly inconsistent. One minute a contestant is getting her throat slit in the ring, the next a woman in the locker room is undulating out of her clothes like a stripper. You know, like how women undress when they're in a locker room full of other women. Why is she shaking her butt like that? Well, I mean, clearly it's for the audience, but do you want me to take this movie seriously or not? If you don't, you probably shouldn't spend so much time on low-rent Karate Kid philosophical ramblings. (Also, magic is apparently real in this universe?)
4. The script is muddled. I guess it's admirable that the writers try to give so many characters distinct arcs, or at least some dimension, but it's really just the idea of depth rather than actual depth. Again, I know people will counter this criticism with, "What do you expect? It ain't meant to be Shakespeare!" But Terminator 2 isn't meant to be Shakespeare, either, and it still has well-delineated, easily understandable characters. Heck, even Mortal Kombat (1995) does a better, clearer job at getting you to understand who everybody is and what they want. In a way it's like the script is more ambitious than the actual story can support, which leads to a pretty unsatisfying conclusion.
But: I wasn't bored while watching it. So thumbs up.
1. I watched it because I wanted to see attractive women in action scenes. I got that.
2. The performers are clearly hired for their physical skills rather than their acting chops. The acting is fine--not spectacular, but good enough. Unfortunately, the director chose to present the fight scenes with choppy editing and that overdone Zack Snyder speed-ramping that should have died out quicker than brostep, so you get the feeling you're never really seeing the full extent of what these women can do.
3. The tone is wildly inconsistent. One minute a contestant is getting her throat slit in the ring, the next a woman in the locker room is undulating out of her clothes like a stripper. You know, like how women undress when they're in a locker room full of other women. Why is she shaking her butt like that? Well, I mean, clearly it's for the audience, but do you want me to take this movie seriously or not? If you don't, you probably shouldn't spend so much time on low-rent Karate Kid philosophical ramblings. (Also, magic is apparently real in this universe?)
4. The script is muddled. I guess it's admirable that the writers try to give so many characters distinct arcs, or at least some dimension, but it's really just the idea of depth rather than actual depth. Again, I know people will counter this criticism with, "What do you expect? It ain't meant to be Shakespeare!" But Terminator 2 isn't meant to be Shakespeare, either, and it still has well-delineated, easily understandable characters. Heck, even Mortal Kombat (1995) does a better, clearer job at getting you to understand who everybody is and what they want. In a way it's like the script is more ambitious than the actual story can support, which leads to a pretty unsatisfying conclusion.
But: I wasn't bored while watching it. So thumbs up.