Pamela Anderson and Gary Busey even make appearances. No Rules is a relatively early MMA film, starring Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, Dan Henderson and Bruce Buffer, among others. Take a peek at the trailer, since I can't possibly do this masterpiece any justice. Moreover, Bonnar has one of those faces that you can't take seriously.Įven when "The American Psycho" is supposed to look beat up, his facial expression looks more like something out of a Laurel and Hardy film. It’s just a shame that the cinematography and the script are so distracting. Simply pointing a camera at the actors and filming won’t get the job done.įor what it’s worth, Bonnar does a decent job with what he has to work with. Watching a movie like this makes you appreciate how difficult it is to make a movie look good. However, I didn’t think the makers would grab the first guy they saw with an iPhone and ask him to be the cameraman. Now, I’m sensitive to the fact that a movie like this is going to have a low budget. You’ve heard of B-Movies? Well, I think we’d need a few more letters in the alphabet before we could accurately classify this one. In a nutshell, Bonnar’s character is forced to compete in a mixed martial arts tournament after he and his girlfriend are captured by the devious-and brilliantly named-Lucien Gallows. Let’s start with Supreme Champion, starring Stephan Bonnar as Troy Jennings. If you decide to watch the movie, feel free to tweet Eddie Bravo some of your questions regarding its supposed realism.įor the top two spots on the list, I have a couple of rare treats for you, friends. Maybe I’m taking this too seriously, but when Eddie Bravo tells me that an MMA movie is going to be realistic, I don’t expect the one-night tournament that concludes the film to boast more highlight finishes than have occurred in the UFC’s 20-year history. Halfway through, I was looking for extra hands to facepalm with. How realistic is it that an MMA trainer would, instead of focusing on grappling, teach a former pro boxer capoeira? How realistic is it that an MMA trainer would tell a former wrestler to spend weeks trying to punch a hole in a piece of paper before he tries to learn anything practical?Īnd don’t even get me started on the scene where Michael Jai White beats seven shades of fecal matter out of five police offers while his hands are, quite literally, tied behind his back. If you thought Channing Tatum was wooden in Fighting, just wait until you see Duffee’s tree-like performance. Hilariously, Todd Duffee also has a prominent role in the movie, as one of Michael Jai White’s students. The film is directed by and stars Michael Jai White as a washed-up former mixed martial artist who trains a select few young men whom he deems worthy of his knowledge-no one knows his criteria for determining worthiness. There could scarcely have been less realism had Pixar got involved and turned it into an animated flick. If they were going for realism, they missed the mark by a few miles. After all, Eddie Bravo and Scott Epstein were involved in the movie and had been boasting about how realistic Never Back Down 2 was going to be in comparison to the original.īoy, did they ever mislead the movie-going public. I have to admit, I was cautiously optimistic that this would turn out to be a decent representation of MMA. The action scenes are of a decent standard, which is the only thing that saves this movie from being further up the list. The director could have saved the studio some money and replaced his lead by drawing a tortured-looking face on a two-by-four. Indeed, Tatum delivers each line as though he is reading from an out-of-focus teleprompter. To say that he represents a charisma vacuum would be putting it mildly. The first thing that I noticed while watching this film recently is that Tatum has improved almost beyond recognition as an actor. Betrayal, romance and predictable plot lines ensue. The movie follows Shawn McArthur, who is recruited to become an underground street fighter. Seriously, this could have been considered a remake more faithful to the original than Vince Vaughn’s Psycho. I half expected Channing Tatum to affect a hybrid JCVD-GSP accent just to complete the intellectual property theft. Fighting, starring Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard, shamelessly rips off an infinitely better film called Lionheart, which stars Jean-Claude Van Damme at his cheesy best. Let’s be clear about something before I go any further.
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