US Movie Review: Blood Money (2012)

I checked this direct to video low budget actioner because it stars AnD artist Masson Ge,  Gordon Liu, Jimmy Wong and Shiga Lin.  It also features a random guest appearance by Pitbull.... (in one scene, for like 2 minutes).  Its hypothetically about a group of Columbian cocaine dealers who try to take over the Asian drug market (at least that's what I think was going on...)   it has scenes hypothetically filmed in Miami, Sydney Australia and Hong Kong.  Rather ambitious for a low budget movie actually...

The film appears to be an attempt at creating a vehicle for a Mainland martial arts guy named Zheng Liu to show off his martial arts skills.   But apparently between practices he forgot to study much English... his delivery of lines is pretty atrocious (and yet appears to be redubbed anyway).... I guess this was apparent when they were filming because he has only about 10 lines in the whole film.  (actually the director/producer/writer says they purposefully didn't teach him any acting too.... oops). 

The film gives him a number of opportunities to demonstrate his martial arts (including some random Shaolin qigong  circus tricks like breaking the iron bar over his head, etc).    As a long time wushu particioner,  I can say that this guy's wushu skills themselves (demonstrated in a few flashback scenes)  are not actually the top level of martial arts in China....  (he wouldn't get far in a professional level forms competition, thats for sure)

A much better reason to watch this film! Anyway,  they seemed to have gotten a lot of mileage out of their budget,  there's a lot of half-decent CG and pyrotechnics to go with the action...  but  the execution from first time director McQualter is the main problem..... confusing story telling, bad sound, you name it...   and of course the attention to detail leaves a lot to be desired:  Cars in Australia with the steering wheel on the wrong side and shooting four times from a double barrel shotgun.... oops. :-P

3/10