Sometimes more is less. - oh, and spoilers.
This movie borrows from a number of movies before it. Bloodsport - the Kumate is the most obvious one, but the training sequences are reminiscent of kickboxer. In the end, the movie doesn't make much sense.
Two women fight a match all day long (not very likely) and it ends in a tie. Because one of them refuses to share the prize money, they have to find students and train them and the student who wins will determine which lady wins - are you still following me? Yeah, it's already thin.
One lady is set up as the "good" martial artist. She talks to spirits and she believes that a woman will show up, sweep her garden and be her champion, but it seems she gets impatient, so she gets someone to send people up to her place to sweep.
The other lady, the "bad" martial artist has people training in a dojo trying to find her champion and she finds one in a thief who defeats the best lady in her dojo. She then trains the thief, telling her pearls of wisdom like "no mercy".
Meanwhile, the blond lady in the picture and star of the show comes to Hong Kong to fight in the tournament - where her father fought and disapeard many hears ago. Her purse gets stolen and the fights, but loses to 4 street thugs. The good martial artist comes to her rescue, takes her in and is surprised to see that she's the one who sweeps her garden to return the favor of the martial artists kindness.
Some disagreements ensue and some very well choreographed training, including a tai-chi like dance in the shallow water. Parts of this movie are very nice. I liked the training sequences with the good martial artist and the lead of the movie, and some of the fight sequences were quite good. The first fight in the kumate was the best It thought with the tai-kwon-do fighter.
Bits of the fight scenes were unnecessary, like the fights with weapons and making the black boxer look overmatched seemed particularly unnecessary. There were also two villians - the lady who was trained by the "bad" martial artist and a Russian lady who took pleasure in breaking her opponants in the ring, killing at least one of them, badly injuring another. It was necessary to have two villians because that way, one was defeated and the other was turned back to good - like star wars. Got all that?
Oh, and her dead father shows up as a ghost and the movie was all tied together with million dollar bets and the bad guy confessing that he killed the leads father and the good martial artist's husband, who was the bad martial artists brother?
Got all that? Yes, the ending of this movie was a hot mess of how many plots can we borrow and put into one film, but despite all that, the beginning of the film felt like a throwback to 80s martial arts films and it was pleasantly watchable and some of the fight choreography was really quite good. Not a complete waste of time and enjoyable enough in places, but try to ignore the plot as it only makes the movie worse.
If you rent it just to see lady's fighting, it's worth a look. Not the best, but not bad.
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