Advertised as 'the next Bruce Lee', Zheng Liu makes his acting debut in Blood Money as Zhou, an unnamed hit-man for hire that changes his morals to suit whoever is offering the biggest cheque. But when his family is murdered by a ruthless drug lord, his job becomes somewhat more personal as he sides with the Asian Triads and goes looking for sweet revenge.
That's about as explanatory as anybody could be in attempting to synopsise this utterly plot less endeavour. Each formulaic scene plays out in the same fashion: rival drug gangs sit down for a meeting, tempers flare, shots are fired and any number of expendable baddies are removed from play, only to have an almost identical character take their place within mere minutes. Deaths, or at least death threats, are omnipresent, with the barrel of a gun often enjoying more screen time than the man holding it.
Those who disapprove of rapper Pitbull's glorified, self-indulgent music are not likely to enjoy his glorified, self-indulgent performance, but not all the blame rests with the hip-hop megastar.
The 'so-bad-it's-good' overacting and sketchy line delivery becomes very tired very quickly to the point that even the respected Gordon Liu, best known by Western audiences as Pai Mei from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, can't salvage an out-of-place role as Zhou's Shaolin monk mentor.
Often, the lone saving grace of films like this one is the action, but not so here. Being a martial artist first and an actor second, Liu's physical skill is apparent, but his fight sequences are shot and choreographed so poorly that they make Sonny's infamous miss on Carlo Rizzi look like a send-off offence.
In case the point hasn't been made clearly enough already, there are no redeemable qualities to draw from Blood Money, which is at best an embarrassing excuse for an action thriller and at worst an unmitigated disaster of a film.
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