Bad Blood – Review

The boss of Hong Kong Triad Organization “Tung Luen Shun”, Andy was arrested and executed for smuggling counterfeit Renminbi in mainland China. Mysterious murders followed, causing deaths of many leading members of the gang. This is a martial arts movie, filled with crazy intense battles. Its story is also fairly predictable, favoring style over substance.

However, the action is actually quite strong, which is probably why most of you would want to see this film in the first place. I suppose I can go ahead and admit that everything other than the action falls flat on its face. Along the way it provokes way too many yawn inducing talk scenes and far too many glances at the watch to be considered a successful dramatic work. I haven’t been particularly impressed by Law’s past martial arts films in general or Nicky Li’s choreography but this one is good enough for me to spotlight on the site.

Before heading out together, Audrey tells Jason that her panty line is showing and she’d better head upstairs to change. She does, only she takes a zillion years to do so, changing her panties, using the washroom, and generally lazing around her room. It’s stupid scenes like this that could have been trimmed down to create an all around ass kicking experience. Bad Blood needs better style and a smarter tone to succeed at what it tries to do. Frankly, I have been in the asian film game way too long to fall for this type of filmmaking. Later some lives are lost in a baffling circumstances and someone is seeking revenge to become the group new new triad leader. It is riddled with cliches.

Going back to focusing on the only good, I should point out that for the impressive fight scenes, Law sought the expertise of stunt master Li Chung-chi, who has previously worked on a number of films starring Jackie Chan. If you do want to pick this film up, do so on blu-ray as it plays region free and it looks and sounds incredible. Other than the fight scenes, I give this a pass but still semi-watchable.