"Kill 'Em All" Review - Written by Jon Wamsley

Kill ‘Em All

(No, not the Metallica album, but a not too terrible martial arts action film.)

The story follows a group of assassins who are drugged and kidnapped after various nasty deeds, and find themselves waking up in a large cement room. No one knows each other and all are suspicious of one another.

Suddenly a voice comes over a loud speaker letting them know that they are in what is known in certain circles as “The Killing Chamber,” a brutal multi-level arena where only one can escape alive.

The assassins are paired off 2 by 2 to fight to the death via random number drawing. First drawing is a set of numbered steel balls that roll out of a hole. 2 highest numbers battle and the survivor of that battle gets to pick a weapon from a chamber that opens at the end of the battle.

After a few battles, the remaining assassins band together to try and escape, and that’s when the fun happens, as the mysterious voice has 2 soldiers, an Amazonian Woman, and a Big Guy who runs a group called the Psychos, who are these masked lunatics baring weapons who are ready to tear stuff up.

The martial arts choreography is pretty well done, as it appears everyone was doing their own stunts. However, once you’ve seen a film like this, you’ve seen them all. It had it’s own unique points, but as a whole was nothing new.

Gordon Liu, (Pai Mei from Kill Bill 2) makes an appearance as the Mysterious Leader called Snakehead, but his name is never revealed in the film as far as I could tell, just in the description on the back of the case. Unfortunately, he was very underutilized, only appearing in snippets throughout the film until the very end in a not so impressive fight sequence.

I reviewed this on Blu Ray and the transfer was not at all impressive, as it just looked like the DVD was copied to a Blu Ray disc, a lot of pixilation occurs in darker parts, and nothing is crystal clear as it should be.

Overall, I give this film a 4/10. Cool fights and ok story, but very run of the mill stuff. Of course, how many different ways are there to make a martial arts film now? It was no Raid: Redemption.