Lady Bloodfight (2016)

I'm not sure how this movie made it's way on to my Netflix queue but it had been sitting there for a while when I finally decided to watch it this weekend. I wasn't dying to watch it. It was more of a case of me deciding to give it a try and then sticking with it.

Jane is from Pittsburgh where she waits on tables. After getting into a fight with some patrons of the diner where she work she is fired. She then leaves Pittsburgh and travels to Hong Kong to fight in a women's martial arts competition and search for her father. In Hong Kong she meets Shu who fought in the same competition the year before. Shu trains Jane for the competition. Wai, Shu's rival, trains Ling to win the same competition.

The first half was a bit of a slog to get through. The acting in this movie is pretty bad but there are a few emotional moments in the second half of the movie that got to me a little bit. I did like the music and how they used it, especially towards the end. The fight scenes within the competition and outside of it were decent. I'm not sure what I really expected to get out of this movie. Most of it felt forced. I shouldn't have been moved by it, even though I was. There were lots of short cuts taken, lots of things left unexplained.

The lead actor, Amy Johnston, has primarily worked as a stunt performer including as a stunt double for Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She has lots of credits on IMDB in that capacity. There are a few short, action heavy films on YouTube that she starred in like The Gate.

I get a little tired of the story about the American traveling to China being accepted as the great champion of a Chinese tradition. It has been done to death. It doesn't have to be China, there are plenty of examples with other countries. The whole trope rubs me the wrong way. Three months of training with Shu and one competition later, Jane becomes the champion and is lauded as the inheritor of a noble and ancient Chinese tradition. Ick!