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Film / Lady Bloodfight

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Fight for your life

Lady Bloodfight is a 2016 American-Hong Kong martial arts action film directed by Chris Nahon (Kiss of the Dragon) and starring Amy Johnston.

Jane Jones (Johnston) is a beautiful but troubled American girl backpacking her way through Hong Kong. When she successfully fends off three thugs trying to rob her, it draws the attention of Shu, a Wudang champion, who is impressed by her raw street fighting abilities. Shu recruits Jane and trains her to fight in the vicious, all-female, underground martial arts tournament known as “The Kumite.”

After weeks of rigorous preparation, Jane is ready to face off against the deadliest female fighters in the world, including Ling, the apprentice of Shu’s nemesis, Wai, a Shaolin master. Other nefarious forces also lie in the shadows, taking Jane on a journey through the gritty underworld of Hong Kong as she fights to be named the best female fighter in the world.


Lady Bloodfight contains the following tropes:

  • Action Girl: Besides Jane herself, you have all the participants of the Kumite, who are all extremely lethal martial artists.
  • Alliterative Name: Our heroine, Jane Jones.
  • Artistic License – Martial Arts: One of the participants in the first round is put on a cross armbar, a hold that targets the elbow joint, but the fighter sells as if the move was a chokehold, to the extent she falls unconscious instead of getting her arm broken. Strangely, the film's production was full of trained real life martial artists, including the very one realizing the technique, yet apparently none of them bothered to point out the error.
  • Awesome Aussie: Cassidy, the Australian fighter, is a boisterous and dangerous as you would expect someone from that continent to be.
  • Bar Brawl: Cassidy's introduction has her becoming embroiled in one of these after she beats a guy in an arm-wrestling contest. She wipes the floor with everyone in the establishment.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Jane has to deal with two separate threats in the movie: Wai and her apprentice Ling on one hand and Svietta the vicious killer on the other.
  • Black Dude Dies First: The first fighter we see die on-screen in the Kumite is the black boxer.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: Hard as it may be to believe, this movie is considerably more violent than the movie that inspired it, featuring a lot more blood as well as more and more graphic death scenes.
  • Bullying a Dragon: While most of the people who attack Jane at least have the excuse of not knowing she’s a skilled martial artist, the asshole from the dinner knew full well what she was capable off and he came back for seconds anyway.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Shu is one of the greatest martial arts masters in Hong Kong, but to say she is eccentric would be a vast understatement.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The main antagonists, Wai and her apprentice Ling, are always dressed in black, while Jane and her master Shu are almost always in white.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • Jane’s Establishing Character Moment is when she puts down an obnoxious patron at the restaurant she works at, in two moves. When he and his friends jump her in the parking lot she demolishes them all.
    • During the Kumite, Lam breaks the boxing specialist’s neck with one kick.
  • Double Knockout: In the backstory, the final Kumite bout between Shu and Wai ended up in the equivalent of this, as the both fell simultaneously out of the designated ring area and therefore the match was declared a tie.
  • Expy:
    • Anyone familiar with Bloodsport ought to be able to spot some of the character counterparts:
      • Jane is one for Frank Dux, the Mighty Whitey blonde hero who comes to Hong Kong and beats everybody.
      • Cassidy is one for Jackson, the boisterous fighter who befriends the hero in the midst of the tournament.
      • Svietta is one for Chong Li the cruel and needlessly brutal fighter who likes maiming the competition.
    • Master Shu has quite a few parallels with Mister Miyagi, from how her student first sees her in action, to her pacifistic approach to martial arts, to the deceased significant other, to how she uses menial labor to test potential applicants, to using her chi to temporarily heal her student enough for her to compete in the final round. Jane even calls her "Mrs. Miyagi" at one point.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Cassidy is being beaten down, with a broken shoulder and a knife-wielding opponent over her, but it doesn't dawn to her that, as explained in the Kumite's rules, she can give up whenever she wants. Even if at some point she was rendered too groggy to think properly, she's still a trained martial artist, which means she should have internalized a long time the importance of tapping out before suffering pointless damage or death. Jane apparently doesn't remember the rule either, given that she then tries to drag Cassidy outside the circle in order to get her disqualified and put an end to the beatdown, which naturally fails because the bad girl is pulling Cassidy in.
  • Husky Russkie: Svietta, the Russian fighter, is also one of the tallest and most muscular participants in the Kumite.
  • Never Learned to Read: Ling is apparently illiterate, as she has to draw an X when asked to sign the waiver to enter the Kumite.
  • It's Personal: Jane’s semifinal fight against Svietta, since Svietta needlessly killed an already beaten Cassidy in the weapons round.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Jane sees her father's ghost during the final match, triggering her Heroic Second Wind, but Ling sees nothing. Shu's reaction to this may indicate that it was not all in Jane's head.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Most of the fighters in the tournament are quite beautiful, but the most attractive ones also happen to be the ones who wear the skimpiest outfits.
  • Mugging the Monster: Several of the fighters encounter men who think they can push them around just because they’re petite women. They are all disavowed of that notion very painfully.
  • Obviously Evil: Svietta, the Russian fighter. She is big, muscular, covered in tattoos, has a scar in the face and a glassy eye. All she is missing is the black hat.
  • One-Woman Army: Most of the participants in the Kumite qualify, being able to completely annihilate roomfuls of opponents singlehandedly.
  • The Remake: The movie is pretty blatantly a Gender Flipped remake of Bloodsport, to the point that the original title of the movie was Lady Bloodsport but had to change it when the producers failed to secure the rights to the original franchise.
  • Ring Out: Just like in the movie that inspired it, knocking or forcing your opponent off the designated fighting area is an Instant-Win Condition.
  • Secret Test of Character: Shu offers young women $50 to sweep the floors of the Wudang Temple. She uses this to evaluate the focus on possible candidates for an apprentice, but what we see of it turns into a Terrible Interviewees Montage... until Jane arrives that is.
  • Talking to the Dead: Shu talks to her dead fiancé all through the movie as if he was in the room with her.
  • We Used to Be Friends: Wai and Shu used to be friends when they were young, even training together. Then they had their falling out.
  • World of Action Girls: There are so many world class female martial artists running around in this world to make a regular tournament to choose the most badass.

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