Customer Reviews

Bloodsport 4

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Wow. This movie sucked the big one. But before we get into the gritty details, a quick plot summary. Daniel Berndhart, a washed out bum of an actor, stars as a mildly retarded former fighting champion scouring the strees of America (which look mysteriously Russian) for an escaped prisoner, Shrek. Danny ends up in jail himself as an undercover agent, who then is launched into a plotless chase after a crime syndicate. I couldn't tell you any more if I wanted to, there is no story!
This hunk of sweaty turd ruined two hours of my life. This is honestly the worst movie I have ever seen crawl out of a toilet and onto my TV screen. It is simply horrible.
To begin with, the plot seems to develop naturally for the first ten minutes, until Daniel Berndhart decides to shoot two of his fellow policemen for no apparent reason. Quickly followed by a demented scene involving a riduculous closeup on the face of a chubby courtmaster, I suddenly knew how terribly low budget this Russian horror flick was going to progress.
The director's idea of a special effect was zooming in way to close for comfort on the actors and making nasty noises. For example, after the prison warden speaks with a crime boss, his nervousness is expressed through fogging up the camera lens with his panting gasps. Besides just special effects, the horrendously low budget showed itself through the fact that every scene occured in one building that looked strikingly familiar to the Kremlin. The police station, prision office, and gangster's hideout, all have short clips showing the aforementioned before cutting to the action.
Now to the actors themselves. The only redeeming quality of this cast is the coincendence that one of them looked exactly like Benjamin Franklin (the gangster). However, he had some distinctly un-colonial personality traits, such as his fetish for positioning 20 scantily clad women around his throne, all of whom seemed to serve no purpouse beyond decoration.
Lets move on to the unique wardrobe feautured in the film. Costumes ranged from victorian era dress suits to 1920s striped jail uniforms to industrial era clothing reminiscent of Oliver Twist. As a bonus, the prison guards dressed like members of the Gestappo and travelled in packs to boot. Most suprising of all is the fight uniform of one of the "kumite" (which never really happens) participants, a speedo swim suit.
Before closing, I would like to point out how random and worthless the majority of the scenes were. There are to many to include, but my personal favorite was when two gypsies performed before Ben Franklin for 5 minutes, adding nothing to the plot but more senslessness. This makes "Jaws III" look like a classic. Simply stated, I cant evin express the pain watching this movie put me through, I would rather gouge out my eyes with a rusty grapefruit spoon than watch it again. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!! UGH....

Daniel Berhardt saves this connect the dot kung fu wannabe from total disaster. He has the presence and lead to carry off the hero role. Maybe he acts with conviction because the bouncer job was already taken and this was it. Maybe he acts with conviction because those Eastern European payments may devalue before the film is finished. Who knows. But all the other characters are cardboard walk ons waiting for their next commercial or extras scene. One laughable scene is the one with the extras of young girls lying on a staircase. Did they too miss out on the cheerleader tryouts?

The fight scenes are predictable as is the runny ketchup from the wounds. Filmed in some Eastern European country one would expect more accents, but the producers wisely spared no expense to try to give us more Western accents. Yes, they too know the audiance that may watch this minor masterpiece of the superberb mediocre.

Being performance challenged in the action scenes, the director wisely shows us the woman agent in a breathtaking chairlift scene as tourists ski below. Brilliant! I must get that resort name to book my next vacation there. If only James Bond would use the chairlift instead of the helicopter to get to the top of the mountain.

Yes, yes, yes........Daniel! You are too good for this. But still can you really make Matrix 2 a success?

If you're not a martial arts fan and you like movies with a poor plot and bad acting you might enjoy this, but I doubt it. Don't waste your money, get Bloodsport 1, 2, or 3.

Premiering on video early in 1999, well into the worldwide Matrix craze, the fourth and final installment of the martial arts series begun by Jean-Claude Van Damme had little chance of gaining prominence to begin with, even before viewers were exposed to its questionable plotline and production decisions. Since then, it's been collectively deemed the worst of the series, but I disagree. "The Dark Kumite" isn't about to outdo the original and the first sequel as a western martial arts opus, but it's more or less on-par with sequel number two, showing strength where that one was weak and vice-versa via some solid fight scenery and an unexpectedly interesting story.

The plot: police agent John Keller (Daniel Bernhardt, who'd get in on the aforementioned "Matrix" craze by fighting in Reloaded) goes undercover to follow a vicious serial killer (Stefanos Miltsakakis, Maximum Risk) to the dreaded Fuego Penal penitentiary so he can investigate the unexplained deaths and disappearances of several inmates. His investigation leads him to a deadly underground fighting circuit hosted by a sadistic mob boss (Ivan Ivanov, Queen's Messenger).

It's pretty disappointing that Daniel Bernhardt isn't reprising the Alex Cardo character from the last two movies, and if given the choice, I'd prefer a straight-up tournament storyline like those had to this thriller stuff. Thankfully, this isn't as bleak, murky, or colorless of a thriller as its made-in-Bulgaria label suggests. The basic premise is pretty straight-arrow, but the story's filled with characters who range from colorful to absolutely crazy (e.g. Derek McGrath as the heavy-breathing, unstable warden with an inferiority complex), interesting set design (e.g. Ivan Ivanov decorates his interior with pretty, statuesque young women), and the setup of some scenes that (unintentionally) makes it unclear whether we're watching actual storyline progression or a character hallucination (e.g. John's sex scene). Aside from failing to convince us that the storyline *isn't* taking place in Europe, the production is generally strong, with a few occasional slip-ups in editing and filming, and the occasional strange decision on the director's part, like when he has Derek McGrath display anxiety by fogging up the camera lens with his breath. Bits like these are most likely what led to the film's initial poor ratings, but as a connoisseur of low-budget DTV junk, I can say without a doubt that this movie would've been very boring if it didn't have all these weird little things going for it.

Except, of course, when it comes to the fight scenes, which are mostly pretty good in any setting, if your standards aren't too lofty. As a cumulative whole, the fight content can't hold a candle to the first two films but I prefer the stalwart, if generic competence of these encounters to the overabundance of ten-second scraps in the third one. "The Dark Kumite" has nine fights, and of these, seven are of decent length and worth watching for the soundness of Daniel Bernhardt's kicks. They're unhampered by poor camerawork or over-editing, but if they have a problem, it's their lack of varied fighting styles and innovative choreography of their predecessors. With the exception of the ones wherein Stefanos Miltsakakis displays his grappling skills, all of them are straight-up karate/kickboxing matches, and none of the extra fighters are all that interesting. Still, I can't underplay my appreciation of their unwavering base quality, and I really liked the end scuffle between Bernhardt and Miltsakakis; it's not as long as I would've preferred, but I still think it's better than the one between Bernhardt and Nicholas Oleson from the last movie.

Regardless of how many folks would disagree with me, I'm glad that this series managed to end on a respectable note. It's come a heckuva long way from the Van Damme's stepping stone into the mainstream and lost some of its charm, but I declare it worth owning for fans of the previous films.

This movie is one of the most boring and horrible films I have ever seen, (with the worst being Captain America). The plot revolves around a corrupt prison warden who makes his prisoners fight to the death to feed the sadistic hunger of some wealthy lunatic. While the plot sounds interesting and has the potential to be interesting, the way the movie was carried out is incredibly slow. The fight scenes in the movie are pathetic. In the original Bloodsport, we were treated with action packed, and lengthy fight scenes. In this movie all the fight scenes are extremely short, a minute, two or three, with the exception of the last fight scene (which definitely does not make up for the rest of the movie). In this movie, most of the fights are all to the death, with the fight sequence going something like this: Martial arts punch, kick, roll away, break opponents neck, next fight, repeat. While it is up to you whether you want to rent this movie or not, I would advise you to rent a second movie to fall back on.

In a break from the prior story lines, Daniel Bernhardt portrays JOHN KELLER, a US Agent presumably operating in the U.S. (but a foreign location is more precise judging by exterior shots) who is asked to go undercover at in a local prison to find out about some mysterious deaths involving the inmates. Keller learns that the Warden is in cahoots with a Caesar, a wealthy nut who stages his own version of the "Kumite" for entertainment and he has been targeted to participate. This is definitely not Bernhardt's best work. Obviously by deviating from the true formula of the Bloodsport films, the writer and director have created a hodgepodge that is difficult to follow and swallow. Bernhardt's true martial arts abilities are never used and the film sorely lacks in the action department. If the franchise is to continue, the writers should stay true to the formula. Even though this film is poor by most standards, Bernhardt is still the "action star to watch for". Just check out BLOODSPORT 2 & 3, TRUE VENGEANCE and PERFECT TARGET.

THIS TIME AROUND, A COP [DANIEL BERNHARDT] INFILTRATES A PRISON TO INVESTIGATE THE ONGOING EXECUTIONS OF THE INMATES AT THE PRISON. SUDDENLY, HIS COVER IS BLOWN AND HE FINDS HIMSELF FIGHTING TO SURVIVE IN THE KUMITE. THIS MOVIE IS SO BORING. THE ACTING IS BAD, THE FIGHTS ARE CORNY, AND THE SCRIPT REALLY SUCKS. VAN DAMME LOOKALIKE DANIEL BERNHARDT IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A MARTIAL ARTIST THAT KNOWS HOW TO FIGHT, BUT SERIOUSLY HAS PROBLEMS ENTERTAINING AN AUDIENCE. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WHY COULDN'T THERE JUST BE ONLY ONE BLOODSPORT MOVIE? WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE SEQUELS? FROM WATCHING THIS MOVIE, I ALMOST DON'T WANNA SEE PART 2 OR 3. EVEN IF YOU ARE A MARTIAL ARTS FAN LIKE MYSELF, YOUR BEST BET IS TO AVOID THIS ONE ENTIRELY.

This movie after watching it was surprisingly a poor sequel because i was expecting a good kumite like the first 3 bloodsport films.

First of all the lighting in this movie was very bad and very dark, no wonder why this movie was called the dark kumite, because i couldn't see a thing.

Secondly, bloodsport IV has a very strange twist to it, its more like a crime thriller like hellraiser inferno. And the story was very hard to understand, if you watch it for the first time (or maybe im stupid).

This is one of those movies you need to watch a few times to pick up what you missed out on. What i did pick up on by watching this movie the first time was that the character alex cardo (the champion from bloodsport 2 & 3) is replaced by a new character called john keller.

After watching this movie a few times i figured out that detective john keller "WARNING: spoiler alert.........................." shoots 2 police officers to go deep, "DEEP" undercover to solve a case of a number of prisoners who have mysteriously left the face of the earth, but have really been selected to participate in a kumite, the dark kumite.

As a stand alone movie i would give it an 8/10, but because it has the name bloodsport attached to it, this movie has nothing to do with the series and gets a 1/10 from me, and is awarded as one of the worst sequels of all time.

In addition to that, other worst sequels include:

Best of the best 4 (worst of the worst)
Kickboxer 5
red scorpion 2
rocky 4

...I am going to admit, this movie is not the best martial arts movie around, but I am still going to give credits for the great series that is Bloodsport. This movie aint no Bloodsport 1, or 2, but it does give a small dose of suspense. When I first watched this movie, I could of never predicted what was going to happen to Seheck (if thats how his name is pronounced). I don't know much about the directors of this film, but I don't agree on most of the things that has happened. This movie is basically about a convict who was "Executed" for murder some time ago (Seheck), and was mysteriously released from prison without the approval of authorities. Undercover agent, a martial arts expert, Keller, goes undercover as a convict to try and solve the mysteries occurance of this fiasco, and a mysterious deaths of other convicts. The warden is suspicious about Keller being undercover, and begins to toy with him around a bit, even up to sending an undercover chick to try to get the words out of his mouth, but still no luck.... until the fight....
Keller (shortly after his religious rival) is due to execution by orders of the law, and send to injection. But then Keller wakes up to a surprise, finding out he has one chance of freedom..., to win the savage martial arts battle, the kumite.
Now, this is my favorite part of the whole movie, even though there isn't much to say about it because the fights don't last as much, but like I said, the ending has a hard turnpoint. I have to give some credit to the way they made the bad guy (seheck), because he isn't one of those bad guys who you would hear whinning, or complaining, but is serious as it can be. I am also flattered that he is a Judoka (master of judos) which makes it alot more interesting, and isn't as typical as other martial arts movies (which don't use judos). Overall, I say this movie is okay, but could of been longer, and more approval. So I say if you like Martial Arts movies, buy Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite - it's worth watching two to three times.

Compared to the others the production value is the best. The look of this film is unique. Vibrant colors and costumes take you on a visual journey. Lets face it this is a karate movie. I doubt any of the fighters fought on broadway but the cast of charactors that surround Bernhardt make him watchable. I figure the lack of fight scenes is due to the budget so give it a chance and stop complaining. The guy who plays Doc Rosembloom is hysterical!