Brad reviews BLOOD AND BONE (2009), starring Michael Jai White!

Posted on June 11, 2025 by Bradley Crain

Michael Jai White is Bone, an ex-convict who also happens to be a badass martial artist. After getting out of prison, Bone heads to Los Angeles and rents a room from Tamara (Nona Gaye), a foster mother to three kids. Once there, he hooks up with Pinball (Dante Basco) and enters the underground street-fighting scene, quickly gaining a reputation as the best fighter around. This catches the attention of the ruthless James (Eamonn Walker) who controls the local fighting action. Bone takes a special interest in James’ woman, the beautiful Angela (Michelle Belegrin). When Bone easily dispatches James’ best fighter Hammer (Bob Sapp), James invites him into his life because he wants him to take on Pretty Boy Price (Matt Mullins). Price is the prize fighter of the wealthy and powerful Franklin McVeigh (Julian Sands), and James sees Bone as his chance to beat Price and join the big time. But Bone is much more complicated than he initially seems, and he has an agenda that involves Angela and keeping a promise he made to an old friend.

I’m a fan of B-movie star and martial artist Michael Jai White. I remember buying the DVD of BLOOD AND BONE a decade or more ago and thinking it was a good movie. I decided to revisit the film today and my opinion remains the same. It has a memorable opening scene where mixed martial artist Kimbo Slice and his crew confront White’s character Bone in the bathroom of an unnamed prison. Slice runs his mouth, and we soon learn that Bone is the biggest badass around. It’s a simple, awesome scene that proves to be a perfect introduction to our hero. From this point forward, BLOOD AND BONE seems to follow a similar storyline to my favorite Charles Bronson film HARD TIMES (1975). In HARD TIMES, Bronson is a badass fighter who rolls into town, hooks up with the fast talking James Coburn, dominates the local street fighting competition, and then heads back out of town. In BLOOD AND BONE, Michael Jai White rolls into town, hooks up with the fast talking Dante Basco, and dominates the local street fighting competition. However, in this film we find out that White is doing all of this to keep a jailhouse promise to a friend before heading out of town. I like White as an actor, martial artist, and charismatic screen presence, so I was all in as the action and the story played out.

Aside from Michael Jai White’s basic badass character, I also like the relationship that develops between his Bone and Nona Gaye’s character, Tamara. She has a world weariness and bullshit detector, but she also realizes that his character has more depth than it may initially appear. They have some good moments sprinkled throughout the film that seem more grounded in reality than your typical B action movie relationships. Eamonn Walker is appropriately evil as the ruthless James, a man who has zero redeeming qualities. His character may not be set in the real world, but a movie like this needs someone to really dislike and Walker fits the bill. Dante Basco is fine as the fast-talking Pinball who helps break Bone into the underground fighting scene, but I didn’t find his character especially memorable. Julian Sands is prominently billed, but his part is quite small. He shows up at the beginning and the end, and delivers an outrageous monologue to Eamonn Walker about how he and his rich, white buddies are entertained by African Americans, but they don’t really want to hang out with them. It’s a pretty uncomfortable scene to be honest with you even though it’s being delivered to a completely despicable character.

Overall, I like BLOOD AND BONE as a badass action and martial arts film with some heart. It’s not always easy to watch as it’s pretty violent, with multiple arms broken and shoulders dislocated to graphic effect. It also throws around some inappropriate slurs, which is somewhat typical of B movies made fifteen to twenty years ago, but they still stand out in this day and time. However, thanks to Michael Jai White’s badass performance, BLOOD AND BONE delivers the goods for anyone looking for an entertaining, bone-crunching action film. In that context, I definitely recommend it. See the trailer below:

Bloody Art: Tale of the Vampire (1992, directed by Shimako Sato)

Posted on October 29, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

When Anne (Suzanna Hamilton) gets a job at the library, she is immediately attracted to the quiet and studious Alex (Julian Sands) and he to her. Alex claims to be a scholar who is at the library to do research on “religious martyrs” but Anne cannot escape the feeling that she has known him before. What Anne does not immediately realize is that Alex is a vampire and that she was set up with a job at the library through the machination of Edgar (Kenneth Cranham), another vampire who claims to be a doctor. Once, Edgar and Alex were both in love with the same woman, the beautiful Virginia. After circumstances led to Virginia being taken away from both men, Edgar dedicated the rest of his vampiric existence to making Alex miserable. Anne, who looks exactly like Virginia and may even be the reincarnated version of her, is a pawn in Edgar’s latest scheme. When Alex and Anne start to fall in love with each other, Edgar’s plan leads to tragedy.

Tale of the Vampire is an unjustly obscure vampire film from the early 90s. It used to play frequently on late night Cinemax, where it was advertised as just being another sex-fueled horror film but actually, Tale of the Vampire is a moody and contemplative art film. The focus is on Alex’s feelings of guilt and his fear of hurting Anne in the same way that Virginia was hurt while Anne has to decide how far she is willing to go to be with Alex. All three of the main actors give good performances, with Cranham nearly stealing the show as someone whose actual identity will become obvious after repeat viewings. Tale of the Vampire has never gotten the attention that it deserves and it’s not an easy film to find but I recommend it.

Cleaning Out The DVR #37: A Room With A View (dir by James Ivory)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

Poor Cecil Vyse.

The 1986 film A Room With A View is a love story. It’s about a young woman who meets a young man in Florence, Italy and then, upon returning to England, she discovers that the same young man and his father are now her neighbors. From the minutes they meet, it’s obvious that the young man and the young woman are destined to be together. The only thing that’s standing in their way is the strict culture of conformity of Edwardian England. That and the fact that the young woman is engaged to Cecil Vyse.

Cecil represents the establishment. He comes from a good family. He’s well-educated. He talks about the right subjects. He holds all the right opinions. He’s not an exciting man but he’s a good man who is destined to have successful but not very interesting life. From the minute that we meet him, we know that our heroine is not meant to stay with Cecil.

And it’s heart-breaking because the film goes out of its way to show that Cecil is not a bad person. In his own befuddled way, he’s one of the most likable people in the entire film. He may not have an interesting mind but he does have a good heart. When the moment comes that Cecil’s heart is broken, the film treats him with respect.

Of course, it helps that Cecil was played, in one of his first roles, by Daniel Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis plays the role with a quiet dignity. Instead of just turning Cecil into a mere nuisance that has to be pushed out of the way in the name of love, Day-Lewis emphasizes Cecil’s humanity. There’s a quiet scene where the recently heart-broken Cecil ties his shoes that is an example of truly great acting.

As for the two young lovers, Lucy Honeychurch is played by Helena Bonham Carter while George Emerson is played by Julian Sands. Both of them are achingly beautiful and, even more importantly, they both look as if they belong in Edward England and with each other. Still, seeing this film today, it takes a little while to adjust to seeing both Bonham Carter and Sands playing such … normal characters. We’re so used to seeing Helena killing people in Tim Burton movies that it’s nice to see her getting to rather sweetly fall in love for once.

The entire film is full of great British actors, all at their best. Denholm Elliott plays George’s father and gets to deliver a rousing defense of both true love and free thought. Maggie Smith plays Lucy’s overprotective aunt while Rosemary Leach is Lucy’s supportive mother. And then you’ve got Simon Callow as an eccentric vicar. (Because every British film needs an eccentric vicar.) Lucy’s younger brother is played by an actor named Rupert Graves and he’s so adorable that I kind of found myself wishing that he could have had a spin-off movie of his own.

A Room With A View is a wonderfully romantic film, one that I could easily see myself spending days just watching over and over again. A Room With A View was nominated for best picture but it lost to the far less romantic Platoon.