Undisputed 2:
Last Man Standing (2006)
aka Champion 2: Last Man Standing
Starring: Michael
Jai White, Scott Adkins, Ben Cross, Eli Danker, Mark Ivanir, Ken Lerner, Silvio
Simac, Valentin Ganev
Director: Isaac
Florentine
Action Director: J.J.
Perry
For much of the duration of the previous incarnation of It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For, I didn't review a lot of Hollywood/Western martial arts films. It had nothing to do with availability; cable channels here Brazil like Megapix and Space are always showing action shlock--mainstream and straight-to-video--from the good ol' U.S. of A. Hell, even channels like AMC (American Movie Classics) and A&E (Arts and Entertainment) routinely show Van Damme and Steven Seagal movies here. And I'm sure the vast majority of the low-budget martial arts films that filled video store shelves in the 1990s can be found for free on Youtube. So yeah, no problem with availability.
It’s not that I don’t like American martial arts films, because I do. A lot of them. Especially now that shaky-cam, bad lighting, unnecessary close-ups and rapid-cut editing is a major part of action filmmaking these days, those low-budget films from the 80s and 90s are looking A LOT more accomplished in terms of the fighting goods. I also like the actors. I have a soft spot for crappy DTV Steven Seagal fare; I once joked with a friend and said that if a strange woman wanted to lead me astray, she need only follow me to a video store and wave a Seagal film in front of my face (I jest, of course). I like those Seasonal Films from Corey Yuen and Lucas Lowe that feature the death-defying bad acting of Loren Avedon. Give me Cynthia Rothrock over Angelina Jolie or Jessica Chastain any day. Give me the Van Damme films made up until The Order—yes, I’m one of the few people who unironically love Knock Off.
So why didn't I review more American movies? I don’t know. I really couldn't tell you. I did start remedying that during the final months of my site before the epic server crash of March 2013. From decent movies like Tekken to crap like King of Fighters to stuff like Never Back Down, I was starting to expand my review repertoir past East Asia. Once such movie that I reviewed back then was Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing.
Undisputed 2 is also one of those films that I liked more than I might have in other circumstances if only because I have little experience in the genre it represents. I’ve seen very few prison movies, so I’m still something of a newbie in terms of what the genre conventions are. I’ve seen Death Warrant, but that was a long time ago and thus I only remember JCVD beating up Al Leong in a laundry room and a villain who simply doesn’t want to die. I saw the Hong Kong movie Prison on Fire 2, but all I remember about that is that the action was rather generic for a film that got a nomination for the Best Action Design award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. I also saw the Jackie Chan movie Island of Fire, whose prison segment was largely forgettable, save that Jackie Chan and Andy Lau were mortal enemies and suddenly become friends when they go on a suicide mission at the end. Oh, and there was also Big Stan, which suggested that the only thing people in prison think about is either beating each other up or sodomizing one another.
So Undisputed 2 follows the life of boxer Robert Chambers (played by Ving Rhames in the first film, now played by Silver Hawk's Michael Jai White). He’s reached the point in his career in which he’s more marketable in the overseas market than he is stateside. This time he’s in Russia (or the Ukraine—I was never quite clear on where the film was set) doing vodka commercials and being a generally-arrogant has-been. One evening after filming, he goes back to his hotel and is assaulted by some mobsters and knocked unconscious. When the police arrive, they find some stashed cocaine and quickly have Chambers arrested and thrown into prison.
The reason?
Well, the prison that Chambers is thrown into is notorious for its illegal fighting circuit, which is filmed and televised to a mobster’s club, where rich patrons make bets on who the victor will be. These days, the reigning champion is a powerful fellow named Boyka (Scott Adkins, The Expendables 2 and Assassination Games). Unfortunately for the owner of the club, Gaga (video game voice actor Mark Ivanir), the fact that Boyka has yet to be defeated means that his racket is quickly losing money and will close down in a few months if he can’t find an opponent who has a good chance of beating him. Enter Robert Chambers, who’s sort of like the Mike Tyson of the B-movie of the world and something of a Great Black Hope for the Russian mafia.
As soon as Chambers reaches the prison, he makes friends with his roommate, a heroin addict named Steve (Ben Cross of The Mechanik). He also quickly incurs the wrath of Boyka, way before he even agrees to fight him. The brutal warden asks Chambers to participate in the fight, but Chambers backs down. So, the warden responds by doing inhumane things to Chambers, like making him wade around in a cesspool and throwing him into a cage with only the minimum of clothing. It takes a while, but Robert eventually agrees to fight.
The fight actually goes fairly well for Chambers until one of Boyka’s men spikes his water. A drugged Chambers gets the crap kicked out of him and subsequently loses, although Boyka doesn’t punch him to death like he did his previous opponents. Lord only knows why, though. Chambers recovers and attacks the warden, which leads to a long sequence in which Chambers is “crucified” and left out in the cold. The rest of the prisoners begin to feel for him and do their best to take care of them. Chambers repays their kindness by sneaking in some favors via the mobster in charge of setting up the fight. This elevates his status in the eyes of a wheelchair-bound prisoner (Eli Danker, who showed up in Florentine’s Special Forces USA), who happens to be an ex-Russian Special Forces agent. The wheelchair guy agrees to help Chambers train for his inevitable rematch with Boyka.
I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of prison movie clichés that show up in this film that I’m not familiar with (or at least tired of). Brutal warden? There’s one of those, although this warden is a wuss. He just has a lot of guards willing to brutalize prisoners for him. Sage-like prisoner? The wheelchair guy is sort one, although he doesn’t philosophize so much as he teaches Michael Jai White how to break a man’s leg at the knee. Sodomy references? Thankfully there were none of those—I think Big Stan cornered the market on those at the time. Prison riots? Nah, we didn’t get any of those, either.
One thing I liked about this movie is how Michael Jai White’s character is far from perfect. He spends most of the movie being a bit of jerk, to be honest. If I played a drinking game in which I took a shot every time his characters said, "Fuck you", I’d have alcohol poisoning by the end of the first act. However, he gradually overcomes his misanthropy, which unlocks the door to his being able to beat Boyka at the end. It’s as one writer said about the key to making an action movie: the main character has to overcome an internal problem in order to face an external one. It’s better than his character in Blood and Bone, who seemed more or less perfect (both as a person and as a fighter) from the start, even though he was an ex-con and all. White’s depiction of Chambers shows a man who’s insanely powerful, albeit one who still needs a few injections of philanthropy and a couple of pointers in how to fight an insane MMA stylist.
Of course, this is yet another movie that I watched mainly (well, entirely) because of the fights and boy, was I not disappointed. The choreographer is J.J. Perry, an American best known for his work as Scorpion in the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. He starred in and choreographed a film called Sunland Heat, which I reviewed back when this site was located at Geocities. The film was made in NE Brazil and was absolutely horrible. It was easily one of the worst martial arts films I’d ever seen, right down there with Elektra, Hot Potato, and Kindergarten Ninja. You can imagine how excited I was when I found out he was working on this film.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that his choreography here turned out to be some of the best choreography seen from a Caucasian action director. I’m serious. The man really knew what he was doing here. He had already done stuntwork and some uncredited choreography prior to this film. He was helping on pre-production of Ultraviolet when Isaac Florentine invited him to work on this. Influenced by the popularity of MMA, Perry went for the impact. As such, he places a lot of focus on real blows to the body and minimum fake hits to the head. Adkins's opponents often found themselves on the receiving end of his aerial bootwork, taking actual kicks to the chest and necks in multiple takes.
The exchanges between Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White border on the Hong Kong level of rhythm and speed, with almost none of the punching bag choreography that showed up in so many Van Damme films of a similar stock. Perry stated in an interview with Scott Adkins for his "Art of Action" series o Youtube that when you work with non-martial artists, your work is limited by their limitations. When working with the real deal, you just place the camera and let their abilities do the talking. The lighting and camerawork are perfect and we can almost always see what’s happening, especially when Scott Adkins is performing his gravity-defying kicks. J.J. Perry was inspired by the music video for "Radio" by Robbie Williams to using ramping, or switching back and forth between filming in 88 fps and 22 fps, so that a special movie is performed in slow motion and then switches back to regular speed at the moment of impact.
Michael Jai White impressed me as an actor here, and he acquits himself well in the fight scenes. He has a few group brawls at the prison before finally focusing on his bouts with Adkins. However, bear in mind that he’s playing a boxer in this movie. Thus, most of his moves involve his fists, although we can assume that he does some street fighting moves in his fights, too. However, the powerful kicks that he demonstrated in films like Blood and Bone are nowhere to be seen here, which is keeping consistent with his character. He does get one flashy move, however: a flying knee smash that my friends and I refer to as the “Super Cyber Bionic Knee.” I think I got that term from a cyborg kickboxer in the classic Sega game Eternal Champions. White has stated that he preferred to be outshone by his co-star, as it allows for Chambers's story arc to be told through fighting.
The scene-stealing action obviously goes to Scott
Adkins. Adkins is one of the greatest martial artists to come onto the scene in
the last decade, after Jackie Chan got old and Jet Li largely stopped caring.
He’s right up there with Tony Jaa and Dan Chupong, albeit with more acting
skills than both men combined and minus the former’s bout with insanity. The
man can performing flying kicks that’d make Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang
Lee jealous and we get to see them A LOT in this film. Despite being the
villain, he participates in numerous fights during the film, including four
ring bouts (one against Silvio Simac, who fought alongside him against Jet Li
in Unleashed; two against Jai White; and one against some other
guy) and numerous training sequences against his fellow prisoners.
While interviewing Michael Jai White for "Art of Action", Adkins pointed out that he often wore platformed shoes to appear taller than White and thus make his Boyka character more imposing. Moreover, the fights are often filmed at angles that push the illusion of Boyka towering over his adversary, who is already jacked to begin with. White points out that Boyka was written for Dolph Lundgren, but apparently negotiations fell through and the role went to Adkins. Three sequels later with a fourth one in talks, Boyka has become the most popular character Adkins has played.
No comments:
Post a Comment