Title: Blood Money
Directed by: Gregory McQualter
Starring: Zheng Liu, Gordon Liu, Alex Castro, Brad McMurray, Nelson Grande and Pitbull
Running time: 108 minutes / Rated R / Available on Blu-Ray
Special Features: Trailer
Hong Kong’s Dragon Triad and Colombia’s drug cartel have devised a plan to traffic two tons of cocaine through Miami, Australia and China. Zheng Zhou, a renowned warrior from China however has a grudge against the Dragon Triad because they kidnapped his sister and murdered his parents, and he wants revenge. He attempts to stop the drug trafficking plan at every turn. Both bosses reach an impasse in their fight for power when the Cartel holds a little sister of the Triad hostage. The Triads reach out to Zhou to help them rescue their sister and assassinate the Cartel.
I have no idea why Pitbull is even listed on the front of the case, because all he does is sing a little ditty about 10 minutes into the film, does some mediocre acting for another 2-3 minutes and he’s gone forever…and he plays HIMSELF. The thing about casting actors in an English-speaking movie and they don’t speak English very well, the acting tends to suck balls. None of the actors seemed very comfortable with the script because the dialogue was very awkward; even the Australians were having trouble. There were scenes where they spoke in their native tongue with subtitles provided, then they went on to translate what they just said – what was the point of that? In another scene they forgot to add subtitles altogether and didn’t explain what was said. Seriously what the eff?
The martial arts fighting scenes were too few and far between. The majority of the fighting was very poorly choreographed and some were bad wire acrobatics with some iffy parkour thrown in. If you’re going to do fighting scenes, make it look like it hurts, not look like some depressed emo kid is slap fighting some giant muscular dudes. The explosions were obviously CG, and not really good either. One scene Zhou is drinking out of a liquor bottle on a rooftop, and you can tell it’s filmed on green screen because the background doesn’t match through the clear bottle.
The only scenes I liked were with Gordon Liu, although the dialogue is crap, his acting perseveres. The scenes where Zhou throws his needles were kind of cool too, but then they effed it up by having an underwater shootout in a pool that was maybe 5-6 feet deep. Why do action filmmakers think that stuff is still going to fly anymore? You can’t shoot a guy underwater, it’s been busted by Mythbusters. A knife fight in the water would’ve been sufficient.
Then they have a love scene that is weird and out of place. It’s in a hotel room with a leaky roof, and Zhou pushes the girl underneath the leak, starts kissing her and taking her clothes off. Most women would be all, “Dude, WTF?!” I’d be worried about plaster, rat crap and possibly asbestos getting all over me. That’s not sexy.
Blood Money turned out exactly as I suspected when looking at the cover. Lots of flashy camera shots and not a hell of a lot of substance. I was able to watch this film without distraction (phone, tablet) but it wasn’t something I’d care to watch again. I’ve said before that action movies can be like porn; not everybody is watching it for the plot. It’s got some action, but nothing you haven’t seen before.
Reviewed by: JM Willis
Action: C
Story: D
Acting: C-
Special Effects: C
Total Rating: C-
