Shootfighter: Fight to the Death (1993)
45KShootfighter: Fight to the Death: Directed by Patrick Alan. With Bolo Yeung, Maryam d’Abo, William Zabka, Michael Bernardo. Fight matches, that end when a man is either unconscious or dead, are fought in Tijuana. 2 naive friends, hoping to make a quick buck, go there. One owes money to a loan shark – giving them plenty of practice in no rule fights.
“This is one of those movies which is for karate, tae kwon do, kung fu and kick boxing fans, and of course, practitioners. This low budget martial arts movie, which is, as most of them very simple when it comes to the story, characters, directing and other stuff. There is simply no real complex stuff, no real dilemma between characters and no development. Itu0026#39;s a typical good VS evil story with the haunting past element. A fighter Nick (Michael Bernardo) returns to his good friend Ruben (William Zabka), and upon their reunion they decide to sign in on the underground fighting tournament, held by Mr. Lee (Martin Kove). Nick founds out that the fights are brutal and sometimes to the death. But, Ruben is persistent and wants to fight. So, Nick asks for help from Rubenu0026#39;s teacher Shingo (Bolo Yeung), to save Rubenu0026#39;s life. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSo, the movie is actually nothing special. Pretty bad when it comes to some stuff For example, actors canu0026#39;t act. Well, most of them are martial artists. The real actors are maybe Edward Albert, Richard Eden and Maryam Du0026#39;Abo (and I still donu0026#39;t understand how did she get here?). Edward Albert and Richard Eden are not bad actors, but they really appeared in much of the low budget films. Martin Kove is also not a bad actor, but his villain Mr. Lee is just evil and thatu0026#39;s it. He is evil and he looks kind of deadly. Nothing more. Though Kove posses some kind of charisma. Michael Bernardo didnu0026#39;t do much with his character, he just under played it. William Zabka was not that bad, I think he was decent. Though his character is somewhat irritating. Just wouldnu0026#39;t listen and he is too prideful. And not in an interesting, complex way he is just a jerk. Zabka did not move from these kind of films, he remained well known for being martial artist on the film, or rather a bully, just like in u0026quot;Karate Kidu0026quot;. And for the last I saved Bolo Yeung. What can I say? This man cannot act and he doesnu0026#39;t have to. This man has such a powerful appearance on the film, such a powerful charisma and character that he simply doesnu0026#39;t need to act. He played himself basically, but this time he was the good guy. Go, Bolo, go! He is the main man.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe other things in the movie are nothing special, OK, the most important – fighting scenes. They were good, plausible. Well done filmed. Though, there are some that were ridiculous. And I think that music score is pretty interesting, especially in training montage. I recommend this film to all martial arts movie fans.”
