Blood Moon Review

When you go into a theater compound and see the posters screaming, "A champion dies every Blood Moon night" or "Someone's going to die tonight", you get a pretty good idea of what the film is going to be like! Blood Moon is not very different, but the director does try to introduce some novelty into the movie. He has tried to mix martial arts with the detective thriller genre, and unless watched too critically, the movie will be enjoyable for action fans.

The story starts off in a boxing ring where the light heavyweight champion of the world is training. Once he is alone, a dramatically dressed up man walks in, challenges him to a fight and kills him. Enter Detective 'Chuck' (played by Chuck Jeffreys), who fancies himself to be some sort of a magician. This guy is another one of those smart alecs who think they are just too cool and don't need any help with their chores. Well, he finds himself stumped with the next murder as well, and his chief tells him to catch hold of Ken O'Hara (played by Gary Daniels), and ask him to assist on the case.

Ken has left the force for reasons unknown and is having trouble saving his marriage, so he refuses at first. But when his Kendo martial-arts teacher is also brutally murdered, it becomes personal. Ken and Chuck become a team and go about solving the case. They figure out (with some far-fetched deduction) that the killer is only killing people who are champions at their respective physical combat sports - boxing, Kendo, judo, kickboxing etc. After more 'brilliant' deduction and fight sequences, the film moves to an exciting climax, with a different kind of twist in the end.

The one thing that really carries the movie is the action. The co-ordination and the choreography are brilliant, and the fights are realistic, fast, and very exciting. The influence of Asian action cinema, brought in by the director Tony Leung, is very obvious. The movie has also been directed very well - the narration is tight and the story is never a drag.

The director has tried to create a famous duo out of the two lead guys - like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the 'Lethal Weapon ' series. This is a really good movie, and probably might have done well if there were big stars involved. But like most low-budget and low-publicity movies, this one is probably condemned to oblivion. Also, sitting in a sparsely populated theater where the bored audience is only waiting for the sex scenes doesn't exactly create a favorable atmosphere.

If you are an action fan, you should definitely check this one out.