Blood Money (I) (2012) User Reviews

May incite self-harm.

[Jonathon_Natsis · 2/10 · 24 November 2012]

Advertised as 'the next Bruce Lee', Zheng Liu makes his acting debut in Blood Money as Zhou, an unnamed hit-man for hire that changes his morals to suit whoever is offering the biggest cheque. But when his family is murdered by a ruthless drug lord, his job becomes somewhat more personal as he sides with the Asian Triads and goes looking for sweet revenge.

That's about as explanatory as anybody could be in attempting to synopsise this utterly plot less endeavour. Each formulaic scene plays out in the same fashion: rival drug gangs sit down for a meeting, tempers flare, shots are fired and any number of expendable baddies are removed from play, only to have an almost identical character take their place within mere minutes. Deaths, or at least death threats, are omnipresent, with the barrel of a gun often enjoying more screen time than the man holding it.

Those who disapprove of rapper Pitbull's glorified, self-indulgent music are not likely to enjoy his glorified, self-indulgent performance, but not all the blame rests with the hip-hop megastar.

The 'so-bad-it's-good' overacting and sketchy line delivery becomes very tired very quickly to the point that even the respected Gordon Liu, best known by Western audiences as Pai Mei from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, can't salvage an out-of-place role as Zhou's Shaolin monk mentor.

Often, the lone saving grace of films like this one is the action, but not so here. Being a martial artist first and an actor second, Liu's physical skill is apparent, but his fight sequences are shot and choreographed so poorly that they make Sonny's infamous miss on Carlo Rizzi look like a send-off offence.

In case the point hasn't been made clearly enough already, there are no redeemable qualities to draw from Blood Money, which is at best an embarrassing excuse for an action thriller and at worst an unmitigated disaster of a film.

*There's nothing I love more than a bit of feedback, good or bad. So drop me a line on [e-mail] and let me know what you thought of my review. If you're looking for a writer for your movie website or other publication, I'd also love to hear from you.*

Bloody disaster, more like

[TheLittleSongbird · 2/10 · 2 June 2013]

When you see a tag-line like the star is the next Bruce Lee that does make you want to watch Blood Money. Now I know that tag-lines can be wildly exaggerated. Zheng Liu really does have very impressive martial arts skills, but I couldn't properly enjoy them with such lifeless choreography and choppy editing. And really Blood Money is really a disaster that has only Liu's martial arts skills as its saving grace. Visually, it was very confused and tried to do way too much. With the different colour schemes, the constant rapidly-shifting location changes, choppy editing and fast camera work, it never came together and it had a very dizzying effect when watching. The soundtrack is monotonous and forgettable and the dialogue, further disadvantaged by some very stilted line delivery, is just dreadful with clumsy attempts to be cool and iconic. With the story, even with the IMDb summary(interestingly written by the director), I still don't have a bloody clue what was going on in the movie, it was not just formulaic and dull but had a stopping-and-restarting effect and had the feel of the beginning of the movie actually being the middle. The characters are undeveloped and just as incoherent, these characters just come and go with no explanation and when you sometimes don't entirely know who the heroes and villains are you know there's something wrong. In regard to the acting, Liu's martial arts skill are fine but his lead performance on the acting front is a total blank. Pitbull is out of place, Gordon Liu brings some dignity but his character seemed to come out suddenly from another movie so it jarred and in general there was a lot of painful overacting going on. Overall, a disaster. And the comparison to Bruce Lee is exaggerated and most likely a marketing ploy(apologies for the possible cynicism to whoever reads this), Liu is good and promising in his strengths but nowhere near as charismatic, and in regard to Lee's movies while they were somewhat silly at least I could tell what was happening and who was who, an effect I didn't get at all with Blood Money. 2/10 Bethany Cox

8.6?! Whos rating these movies here?!

[goatbut29 · 4/10 · 28 August 2012]

I understand were all different. We all see things in a unique perspective-our own.

Having said that, I cant believe for one second that someone sat through this whole movie and thought to themselves, 'wow!'. I cant believe it.

I wanted this to be good 'cos I was bored and hoping it would sit nicely. I was wrong. Its very confusing and feels like its trying too hard to be something its not-exciting and plot-driven.

Im sorry. There is no way someone thought this movie was above a 5, let alone an 8!

The ratings at IMDb cannot be trusted. Come here to get the plot idea about the movie but put no faith in the ratings. They are garbage. Either that, or the site has nothing but 12yr old 'pitbull' fans posting their reviews.

Woeful

[ulric99 · 1/10 · 14 April 2013]

When I first saw this movie advertised, I checked the reviews here and it had a great score so I figured it would be worth a look... How wrong I was to keep trusting this site. The movie is disjointed, poorly acted and directed and not worth the time or money to watch.

Admittedly, it's a low budget flick but that doesn't make up for how bad this really is.

It's a disjointed mess. If you're looking for a good action movie, with martial arts, go for Bruce Lee "Enter the Dragon". It will be a bit dated than this film but so much more enjoyable.

I think it's now time for me to start using www.rottentomatoes.com for my movie searches; it's not a back-end for amazon trying to sell garbage like this.

Maybe some just expected too much

[garycbelleville · 5/10 · 14 September 2012]

I read a lot of the past reviews and yes there are areas in this movie that are at times confusing and yes we can not clearly understand every word our hero is saying and heck yes some of the special effects are very badly done. The plot was not exactly clear either. However that all being said, I must say that when I sat down to watch this I wasn't expecting an academy award winning, Oscar taking movie, no I was simply expecting the old style martial arts movies from the old days,and yes, even a Bruce Lee style movie, and for me that is exactly what I got. I have yet to sit down to a martial arts movie and expect an Oscar, no I expect great fight scenes and this movie has that for sure. We don't get a choppy fight scene where the screen cuts from one angle to another after every punch to hide the fact that the stunt person is actually doing it, no this movie lets you see a continuous flow of action during the fights and not close up on the face or arm or leg but on the whole body in motion. The main actor here might not have been a Bruce Lee cause there will never be another Bruce but as far as his fighting style on screen he would make Bruce proud. Visual physical poetry in motion. It's true I give this movie a 5 which is good, and thats just because of the great fight scenes.

Stay AWAY!

[mkbrutality · 1/10 · 2 February 2013]

I just went through the hassle of registering after many years of stopping by just to warn you. This movie is by far the worst movie I've ever seen. The plot, the acting, the dialogue is horrendous. The fighting in it is amazingly dull and boring as well. I read somewhere that this guys is the next Bruce Lee? bhuahahahahaha is all I got to say to that.

If you desire to waste your hard earned cash and waste your precious time? then be my guest, but I personally rather watch paint dry or lick windows than waste my time on this....i should have know when i read about him being the next Bruce lee lol

God save yourselves lol

An Australian Kung Fu flick? Better luck next time mate!

[Boba_Fett1138 · 4/10 · 28 August 2012]

Nothing wrong with a good, silly, action packed Kung Fu flick but this movie unfortunately has very little going for it.

First of all, I had an incredible hard time ever getting into this movie. Not necessarily because it was doing some silly things but more so because of its story. For most of the I had absolutely no clue what was going and who was fighting who and what for exactly. OK, so it's all drugs related I got that but please don't ask me what the main plot line was supposed to be all about. But what was even worse, was that I had absolutely no idea who the main characters was and what or who he was fighting for. The movie does an overall poor job with handling and explaining its story, which brings me to another point.

The movie really isn't all that well directed. Gregory McQualter is a first time director, that might be a good excuse but fact remains that both the storytelling and overall flow of the movie are far too lacking. It's obvious McQualter had more eye and passion for making a Kung Fu flick with plenty of action in it but he had no clue how to tell a good and compelling story as well, which got us involved with its characters and events happening on the screen. Not that the story itself seemed to be anything too solid either but I still have the feeling that in the hands of a more capable and experienced director this movie still could had worked out and at least would had become something more fun and entertaining to watch.

At first I thought it was a bad move for the movie to not let its main character, played by Zheng Liu, speak a lot. It made him uninteresting as a character and it was something that could had still worked out with a far more charismatic person. Then he however started to open his mouth more and suddenly I started to wish that he stayed mute for the entire movie. He really can't act and all of the dialog that's coming from his mouth sounded awful.

This obviously wasn't a very expensive movie to make and in that regard it's still being a bit of an accomplishment. It has a good look to it but I did also wished that I held back on its special effects a little bit more at times. It isn't always that convincing looking and it took away some from the movie its action as well.

The action is still some decent stuff. I at least feel and think that the genre lovers will still get some kicks out of it. Zheng Liu is obviously more talented in that department as well, though he most certainly ain't no Bruce Lee of course, which this movie desperately still tries to let you believe.

I was certainly glad when the movie finally was over.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Sloppy is the word...

[destroyerwod · 5/10 · 5 July 2013]

I got this movie at full price, 20$ new, which is something i rarely do. I took this one cause it had a french track on it, kudos to them for making it, as the other 2 movies i hesitated with didn't had it... I just hate English dubs, and those other movies where Asian. I can stand french dubs cause i was raised watching those, but English dubs... no. So i got to watch them in cantonese with subtitles and well... anyway.

So i got this one and well... let me say that its a very sloppy movie. The story is hard to follow, as some pointed out, there is not much explaining who is who and does what, its one of those movie that could had use a voice over with a freeze frame on the major players explaining who they where.

Then the special effects... I'm sorry but computer blood and fire explosions that seem like they where made by an university student for a movie project... no thanks... Damn they are bad.

Martial Arts? Well the only saving grace of this movie... some are actually well done and pretty good, but sadly sometimes it got to be stained by that usual wired crap that its just screaming obvious in your face.

In the end, a very forgettable movie that i should had got for 5$ in the bargain bin, not at full retail price...

I'M WATCHING YOU

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 14 April 2019]

The plot didn't make a lot of sense. The Chinese mafia want to deal Colombian cocaine in Shanghai. They travel to Miami to make a deal with the Colombian cartel. They claim the street value of cocaine is twice what it is in the US. The Colombians balk, ethnic slurs are exchanged. People die. The next thing you know drugs are being shipped to Chinatown in Sydney, Australia via Miami.

When a woman is kidnapped, Zheng Liu is hired to get her back. At this point the film becomes a free for all. For some reason Latinos can't work with the Chinese.

The acting left a lot to be desired as it is in most drug/crime movies where everyone plays the ultimate tough guy. Zheng Liu, the star of the film is a subplot for most of the movie. He uses high tech gadgets and old fighting techniques. No CG fighting effects. There are better films to watch.

PARENTAL GUIDE: F-bombs, nudity, no sex.

Blood Money for its investors

[zbojanic · 10/10 · 28 January 2024]

"The next Bruce Lee" tagline was perhaps an over the top, far fetched marketing slogan.

As good as the fight scenes are, the lack of professional camera work and production editing never had a chance to compete as an action film. The storyline must have read much better than what was executed on screen. It took too much focus and concentration to keep up with the switching of scenes and different locations.

Those who backed the production of this film may have expected a commercial return but with no picture house or major studio guiding the edit and quality of production this amateur backed film is surprisingly good for a low budget movie.

Low budget High Quality well done.

[crosslinda3 · 7/10 · 28 August 2012]

With all the world's economic and recessional real life trailers hitting our screens of reality costing people their whole existences,to be able to have some story of a supernatural way to conquer the real hard moments we are all in is much required. To draw upon unique and profound powers of the personality to beat the odds at all costs is what people wish to learn to know...maybe, just maybe we can all do this feat...a better world by focusing within and applying this power outwards in our lives for a better change for our human race...well done Bloodmoney on a small budget getting a big message out..go back to the basics and work the power. The world has been bleeding profusely because of the manipulated world economics. Maybe we can all understand the sublime messages coming through from Bloodmoney...I can.