BJJ: Woman on Top (2023)

BJJ: Woman on Top (2023)

Starring: Angela Morena, Yuki Sakamoto, Jiad Arroyo, Jela Cuenca, Alexa Ocampo, Keanna Reeves
Director: Linnet Zurbano
Action Director: Rey Comia, Miguel Vasquez, Anna Mitra, Ivan Oleta

So, I was at a Brazilian online movie store when I came across this film, which I’d never heard of. When I saw the name and took at look at the poster/DVD cover, I was curious and went to the IMDB, whose plot suggested this was a spicy film about a woman who discovers a “second use” for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I watched the trailer on YouTube and it seemed like that was the case and decided to plunk down a few BRL (Brazilian Reais) and purchase it. If I had only known…

Elise Guererro (Angela Morena, of Butas and Sabel is still Young) is a pretty young lady attending Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (or BJJ from here on out) lessons. When it’s her turn to spar, the combination of her lying on the ground and facing a larger male opponent triggers her and she runs screaming from the dojo.

The film jumps to five months earlier and we find Elise at a college party where she is visibly uncomfortable with all the debauchery—mainly drinking—going on. She asks one of her friends to take her home, but said friend gives her, “Don’t be such a killjoy!” speech. When Elise heads up to the bathroom to freshen up a little, she accidentally walks in on Marco (Jiad Arroyo, of Pabuya and Us x Her) and Riza (Alexa Ocampo, of Bugaw and The Marianas Web) getting’ it on. Although Elise quickly makes her exit, the fact that Marco keeps on looking back to the door will carry some significance. Later on, Elise is given a roofie and some masked figure takes her up to an empty bedroom and tries to rape her. When a traumatized Elise returns to the thick of the party to report what happened, Riza slut-shames her (Marco carries a torch for Elise and Riza knows it) and has everybody pour beer all-over the poor girl.

Elise drops out of college and isolates herself for several months. One day, while exposing her feelings to her deceased father (i.e. talking to the sky and hoping he hears), Elise meets some strapping young man carrying a small birthday cake and balloons. That turns out to be Ace (Yuki Sakamoto, of Pabuya and Wanted: Girlfriend), a jiu-jitsu instructor who lost his fiancée, Diane, a few years earlier. He has a ritual of buying a cake on his deceased love’s birthday and buying balloons that he writes messages on and releases to the sky. He kindly invites Elise to write a message to her dad on one of the balloons and take part in his little ritual. He later gives her his card, which is enough for her to sign up for lessons.

Back to the present, Elise still is dealing with the trauma of her sexual assault even after a few months of training. Ace calls her into a special class where he opens up about how he was abused by his dad and how he learned BJJ in order to take back the narrative and strengthen himself. This is enough to get her to confess her own trauma and he helps her to start putting herself more into her training. A special bond develops between master and student, while Marco is still pining for Elise in the background (despite screwing Riza on a regular basis)…

So, I thought BJJ: Woman on Top was a film about a girl who learns jiu-jitsu to take back her sexuality and even incorporate it into the same. No, not really. This is basically a movie about a girl who has been traumatized, but who develops self-confidence and falls in love with her instructor. Almost like if Redbelt had focused Emily Mortimer’s character getting her confidence back and then pursuing Chiwetel Ejiofor’s ebony tonfa to show her thanks. For the most part, the sex (of which there is a lot) and the jiu-jitsu are treated as separate elements of the story, except for maybe the circumstances leading to Elise’s and Ace’s first love scene together.

The sex itself is what I’m going to assume is standard softcore fare (I am really not an expert on that genre). Lots of female nudity, but no actual full-frontal. Lots of faces in ecstasy and a wide variety of (otherwise standard) positions--including lots of simulated cunnilingus--all set to one love ballad or another. And it feels almost fitting that the first two letters of the title of this softcore romp reference a sexual act (that does show up briefly).

But as I said above, there isn’t actually any jiu-jitsu choreography incorporated into the sex itself, contrary to the IMDB synopsis. The only exception is the opening scene, in which two random people (Paul Pegasus and Honey Jade…now those are two porn names if I’ve ever seen any) are sparring in an overtly erotic manner. What this means is that BJJ: Woman on Top is just some average softcore drama with some jiu-jitsu window dressing, but no real exploration on how the different choke holds, arm bars, and leg locks could incite passion or serve as a enhancement of the same.

There is a bit of jiu-jitsu sparring thrown in here and there. The film ends with Elise discovering who her rapist is—it’s no surprise, given the small cast—and confronting him about it. I honestly don’t know who’s dumber, the man who keeps his “rape kit” under his bed, but close enough to the edge that any one of his girlfriends might see it; or the woman who confronts the man about it in his own house, instead of sneaking out with the evidence and immediately taking it to the police. The two end up going at it, jiu-jitsu style, but as you can expect, this is no Flash Point or Special ID. Rey Comia and Miguel Vasquez were responsible for the fight scenes, while I assume Anna Mitra and Ivan Oleta were responsible for training the actors behind the scenes.

If you want martial arts-tinged sex (like the erotic applications of the praying mantis style), BJJ: Woman on Top is probably not the film you’re looking for. If you want to see gorgeous Filipino girls in various states of undress, then that is another story. It’s not really my cup of tea and it was just some random one-off movie that I checked out because…I dunno…curiosity got the best of me, I guess. 

Boyka: The Undisputed (2016)

Boyka: The Undisputed (2016) Aka: Undisputed 4: Boyka 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Teodora Duhovnikova, Alon Aboutboul, Julian Vergov, Brahim Chab, Paul Chahidi, Petio Petkov, Valentin Ganev, Vladimir Mihaylov, Martyn Ford

Director: Todor Chapkanov

Action Director: Tim Man

I always find it interesting how the Undisputed franchise switched protagonists at the third film, going from boxer George “Iceman” Chambers (Ving Rhames in the first, Michael Jai White in the second) to Russian convinct Yuri Boyka. I know little about the first film. The second film had Chambers being framed for a crime he didn’t commit just so the Russians could have him imprisoned and provide a decent opponent for Boyka. His arc ended there and finding another reason to go to jail would be just as silly as John McClane finding himself in the middle of terrorist activity a third, fourth or fifth time? I mean, how absurd.

So, starting with the third film—and due in large part to Scott Adkins’s growing popularity—the torch was passed to villain Yuri Boyka, who became more of an antihero. He fights against people who are obviously bad, but he’s still a complete asshole to everyone around him. This fourth film humanizes him even more, even though he still lives for the fight and acknowledges that fighting and beating people to a pulp is really the only thing he’s good for. 

The film opens in Kiev, Ukraine a few years after the events of the third movie. I’m wondering if the Ukraine-Russia conflict has anything to do with the difficulties in making a fifth film. Boyka is living there fighting in underground matches and splitting his purses between a simple lifestyle and donations to the local Orthodox church. The priest (Vladimir Mihaylov, of The Legend of Hercules and The Expendables 4) tries to convince Boyka of giving up his violent ways, but the latter still believes that fighting skills is the only talent God bestowed upon him. Shortly after his latest match, Boyka receives a visit from his current agent, Kiril (Paul Chahidi), who has some good news: if he wins his next match, he’ll be eligible to participate in an Eastern European Martial Arts Championship in Budapest.

Boyka is more than happy with the news, since it means that he may hit the big leagues and can leave underground fights behind. His next opponent is a Russian amateur named Viktor (Emilien de Falco, who has worked as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s stunt double). Their fight is well-matched initially, but Boyka turns out to be the newcomer’s superior. The problem is that the dude does not know when to simply stay down, getting up and trying to ambush Yuri after the latter thinks he has won. Boyka gives him a sound thrashing for his treachery. The problem is that that last punch to the head gives Viktor a concussion from which he does not recover. He passes on in the hospital a few days later.

Although he is a fighter at heart, Boyka no longer wishes to be an actual murderer (as opposed to his life prior to getting incarcerated) and is crushed by this revelation. He learns that Viktor left behind a wife named Alma (Teodora Duhovnikova, of The Shepherd: Border Patrol and Day of the Dead: Bloodline) and some sizable debts. The money is owed to a crime boss in Grovny named Zourab (Alon Aboutboul, of Rambo III and London has Fallen), who lusts after Alma. For now, he is content with making her work as a waitress at his fight club to pay off the debts. But it is only a matter a time before he either tries to rape her or force her into prostitution.

Against Kiril’s wishes, Boyka takes a clandestine van across the border into Russia with the intent of apologizing to Alma and giving her his winnings as compensation. After all, the tournament in Budapest is in two weeks. Once in Grovny, Boyka finds out that Zourab is keeping Alma on a very tight leash, complete with a guard at the community center she runs. He finds out where she’s working and discovers her situation. He tries to apologize, but she refuses to accept it. He ultimately makes a deal with Zourab to fight in three matches, including against the club’s reigning champion, Igor (Brahim Chab, a member of Jackie Chan’s stunt team and choreographer of the recent Monkey Man film). But you know what they way about honor amongst thieves…

Undisputed III was subtitled Redemption, but to be honest, that film only covered Yuri Boyka’s physical redemption. He had been the best. He ignominiously lost to Chambers. And he reclaimed his position as the “most complete fighter in the world” by defeating Marko Zaror with a bum leg. Boyka: Undisputed is about Yuri Boyka’s spiritual redemption. He is already making amends for his violent past (and present) by giving to the church. But he soon finds himself in a situation where he must make some great sacrifices in order to redeem himself in full. I know a lot of people did not like the ending and felt he deserved better. I get it. I think it shows what lengths he is willing to go to in order for his soul to feel peace and have a good night’s sleep.

The action direction has switched once again, this time going to Tim Man. Tim Man had already choreographed Scott Adkins in the superlative Ninja: Shadow of a Tear by this point, so he knows how to get the best out of Scott. And as expected, Scott gets a great exercise for his aerial kicks. The same way that Donnie Yen’s signature kick is his jumping back kick (which Scott performs here), Adkins’s signature movie is probably the jumping crescent (or spin) kick that goes over the opponent’s head and turns into a drop kick with the other leg on the way down. I believe that it is known as the “Guyver Kick.” You can bet your last dollar that he’ll do that in this film.

But that is not all. In one fight, he does a variation of of “Guyver Kick” in which he does a jumping front kick and then comes down with a drop kick from the other leg. While fighting Viktor, he does a “Bicycle Kick,” or double jumping front kick with a drop kick twist. He also does a Jump Double Back Kick, similar to how Donnie Yen closes his fight with Michael Woods in Tiger Cage II. In his fight against Boris (Trayan Milenov, who did fight choreography in Black Widow and Secret Invasion), there’s a neat move where Adkins gets his legs kicked out from under him, but rallies that momentum in a double “No-Shadow Kick,” or jumping side kick. He also does the Donnie Yen trademark jumping back kick, only to throw his other leg out for a second hit*. And watch for him doing a jumping crescent kick that he transforms into a leg scissor takedown.

For many, the best fight of the film is Boyka’s second bout for Zourab, which pits him against the Ozerov Brothers, played by choreographer Tim Man and Andreas Nguyen (aka Andy Long, who was a member of Jackie Chan’s Stunt Team in the mid 2010s). That features some strong two-on-one choreography as he has to deal with a pair of talented kickers. They are not nearly as muscular as Adkins, but they have the speed and agility and numbers to make up for it. Boyka takes a brutal flip kick to the back at one point that made me wince.

The big finale pits Adkins against a Russian convict named Koshmar, played by man-mountain Martyn Ford. Ford is not especially flexible or technique oriented: he just a six-plus foot mass of muscle, not unlike Nathan Jones (but more intimidating in appearance). That way, the fight is more about Boyka trying to survive long enough to wear him down rather than out-skill him. It is his hardest fight, mainly because Ford is such a superior physical specimen. What for Adkins doing the Double Jump Back Kick again, but turning it into a Triple Jump Back Kick when he throws in an extra front kick on the way down. My gripes about the finale can be summarized as a) there is little dramatic tension leading up to it and b) it is a little short. There was greater drama in the preceding fight against Igor than this one. But like the rest of the movie, it is a fine showcase for the talents for our favorite Russian antihero played by a British guy with a faux-Russian accent.

* - This one is different from Jump Double Back Kick, which requires him to do a front kick to push off his’s opponent’s body and get airborne to get into the jumping back kick.

Rumble (2017)

Rumble (2017)

 

Starring: Gary Daniels, Sissi Fleitas, Eddie J. Fernandez, Luis Gatica, Fabian Lopez, Justin Nesbitt, Pedro Rodman Rodriguez
Director: R. Ellis Frazier
Action Director: Gary Daniels, Marco Morales

 

According to the IMDB, Rumble is entirely a Mexican production, but with British star, an American director, and an American writer—everybody else behind and in front of the camera are Mexican. I would suppose this to be a co-production, but I really do not know. What Rumble is, however, is something of a throwback to the low-budget early 1990s martial arts films you used to see at the video store about people getting involved in underground fights. Given the general inflated costs of making movies, this one looks a lot cheaper than some of those did, but it a bit of charge.

David Goran (Gary Daniels, of City Hunter and Bloodmoon) is an over-the-top cage fighter who is something of a legend, but has been past his prime ever since he busted his knee in Reno some years back (it comes close to becoming a running joke with people he meets). These days, he mainly goes around Mexico, fixing fights with his girlfriend, Eva (Sissi Fleitas), and profiting off the betting. There is a certain reason that they are a) always on the move, b) in Mexico, and c) fixing fights in order to guarantee their income. You see, some years before Goran met Eva, she was working as a street walker. One evening, she murdered a client in self-defense. That angered her pimp, Rico (veteran stuntman Eddie J. Fernandez), who has been on their tails for a few years, trying to collect a large sum as a compensation for a treasured client.

These days, Goran and Eva have been staying at a hotel, where they are doing their usual business of fixing fights and betting from it. After some post-fight coitus, the two get in argument when David notices a larger wad of scratch in her purse than he was expecting from the fight, leading him to think she’s back to her old tricks (pun intended) in order to make more money. She leaves in a huff, and Goran decides to blow off some steam by going to a local fight bar with the bellboy, Ramiro (Fabian Lopez). Goran gets blackout drunk and wakes up the next morning at Ramiro’s pad.

This is where things get weird (for our hero). When he gets back to his hotel, his key card no longer works in his room. Then, the hotel staff goes all Gaslight on him: the receptionist informs him that the room has been empty for a week. The hotel manager (Pedro Rodman Rodriguez) denies even having met the guy. And when Goran reminds them who is, the two men uncomfortably reach for the phone. Although Goran doesn’t notice, we can see a Wanted sign behind the counter for Goran’s arrest. The hotel security guards chase him through the city, although David has very good sense of direction and finds his way back to Ramiro’s place rather easily, despite having arrived their drunk the night before.

Ramiro informs David that his face is plastered all over the local news, something about Goran having killed someone in a fight the previous night. And since David got sloppy drunk on Tequila the night before, he really doesn’t remember what happened at the fight club after he got sufficiently drunk. That’s when someone calls Ramiro on his phone, asking for David. A distorted voice informs Goran that he is not happy knowing that Goran’s fixing fights cost him money on the betting front, and that Eva has been kidnapped. If he wants to see his girlfriend again, he’ll have to participate in a series of fights in order to win back the money. Ramiro tells David that the voice probably belongs to Delgado, the most feared crime lord in the city.

So, now David has to get over his knee problem in order to fight off a string of local talent who are hungry for fame and fortune, using his off time to find anyone associated with Delgado and question them. Meanwhile, a Federal Policeman named Agent Fonseca (Luis Gatica, of Seized and Misfire), is snooping around the hotel looking for David, whom he thinks might be a lead to Delgado. And more he questions the hotel staff, the more he sees through their Gaslight tactics. Oh, and Rico has turned up him in town, too…

Rumble is a simple little martial arts film. The premise of a fighter being forced into clandestine fighting has been done since the early 1990s, if not longer. There is not much in the way of twists, save that of the final scene. I don’t think the film sells the final reveal in terms of how it fits into the story as a whole. It just begs a lot of questions that the film does even try to answer. And if you try reconciling the twist with certain subplots, you'll probably get a headache before declaring that it simply doesn't make sense. And, well, the villain's scheme does seem predicated on a number of assumptions that could have gone awry in numerous ways. 

There are a handful of fights, staged by Gary Daniels himself and Mexican stuntman Marco Morales (who has worked extensively in Hollywood and is a Muay Thai champion). The fights are very much in the 1990s pre-Hong Kong vein of Hollywood fighting. A bit slow in terms of general rhythm, with a lot of “punching bag” choreography moments. It is very much what you would see in a film like Lionheart or Bloodsport, but with a bit of extra grappling, because this is the post-UFC era. Thankfully, all of Daniels’s opponents are trained fighters, so it’s not just him cracking a bunch of dumpy men’s skulls. Daniels was 54 when he made this, and still has a bit of kick left in him. He does a few kung fu fast hands in a fight or two and can still do a nice jump kick when need be. There are also a few foot chases and a handful of gunfights to round out the action.

Rumble doesn’t really stand out as a martial arts movie, but it’s an easy watch and if you miss the days of picking up some random American martial arts film from the video store starring the likes of Don “The Dragon” Wilson or David Bradley, then this film should give you a sense of nostalgia. But it’s not much more than that.

Tapped Out (2014)

Tapped Out (2014)

 

Starring: Michael Biehn, Cody Hackman, Krzysztof Soszynski, Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida, Jess Brown, Daniel Faraldo, Nick Bateman, Tom Bolton
Director: Allan Ungar
Action Director: Emilio Chino Ramirez

 

After watching the bottom-of-the-barrel Fight Valley and the bland, mediocre Vale Todo, Tapped Out was something of a breath of fresh air for me. It is not a great film, but it was a perfectly entertaining MMA movie with a good performance from Michael Biehn (always glad to see him in stuff), some decent fight choreography, and a serviceable story. Yes, it does feel a little unoriginal, mixing in plot elements from previous movies like Never Back Down and Kickboxer, but is does so reasonably well.

Young Michael Shaw (Kyle Peacock) is having a good night. He has two loving parents and is being promoted at his dojo—one belt away from getting his black belt. However, his joy is short lived. While returning home, the Shaw family car is best by carjackers, one of whom is a little trigger happy. His dad gets blown away outside the car and the killer decides to off his mom, who’s still in the passenger seat and begging for her life, too. “No witnesses” and all that. Thankfully for Michael, he’s hiding on the ground in the back seat and the killer is too careless to check. Michael makes a break for it once the car arrives at the chop shop, although he does notice that the carjacker has a peculiar tattoo on the back of his neck).

Cut to seven years later, Michael (now played by 5x World Karate Champion Cody Hackman, who also wrote the story for his movie) has become a major-league slacker, organizing high school parties and getting beer for his classmates. When the police break up his latest party, he gets caught by Detective Len (Tom Bolton, “The Haunted Museum” and “Paranormal 911”), who takes him back to his longsuffering grandfather (James Neely). Len warns grandpa that if Michael gets caught again doing this, he’ll have to “go through the system.” We learn the next day at school that Michael is the only senior high school student who’s pushing 20, having flunked his senior year twice now. His principal (The Karate Kid’s Martin Kove) makes him an offer, arranging for him to do community service at his old dojo to help him meet graduation requirements.

Without much choice, Michael heads to the dojo after school, where he meets up with his old sensei, Reggie Munro (Michael Biehn, of Dragon Squad and Shadowguard). Reggie’s a bit of a crusty old man and with his own personal demons relating to past war experience. Michael is initially brought on to clean the floors, polish the trophies, and other menial tasks. When Michael shows a bit of a knack for helping the younger students, Reggie lets him help out as an assistant instructor and later lets him resume his training.

Michael is cleaning up the dojo one evening when he’s visited by Reggie’s niece, Jen (Jess Brown, of Death Down the Aisle and Nightbooks). She takes a liking to Michael and invites him to go see some local MMA with her. The main event is a bout involving a mountain of a man named Dominic Grey (MMA champion Krzysztof Soszynski, of Logan and Immortals). It’s during Grey’s fight that Michael sees a familiar tattoo on the man’s neck. You can see where this is going. He initially tries to go to the police, but he’s a bit too on edge to sit down and wait for a detective to talk to him (although Len eventually re-opens the investigation). He considers going all vigilante on Grey, but stops himself at the last minute. The only path he has, then, is in the ring…

When I watched and reviewed Never Back Down many years ago, I summarized the film as “The Karate Kid, but with lesbian make-out scenes.” In the case of Tapped Out, it is “Never Back Down, but without the pandering.” Like the early tournament films of the late 80s and early 90s, there is a revenge element motivating our main protagonist, although the initial crime wasn’t committed in the ring, like in films such as Kickboxer. The Never Back Down bit about the teacher not wanting to teach any student who uses his skills for gain is present, although Michael Biehn’s Reggie relents when he finds out what Michael’s true motives are. And like Vale Todo and The Undisputed 2 (and most kung fu films from the late 1970s), you have the scene where our hero has to train in a second style—Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in this case—in order to defeat his opponents. Where Vale Todo had Fernando Soluço, here we have Anderson Silva (Invincible Dragon) and Lyoto Machida (Unrivaled).

I would say this last plot point represent the film’s biggest failing. Like Vale Todo, our protagonist as a stupid-short amount of time to learn Jiu-Jitsu before having to put his skills to the test. In Vale Todo, Carlos Vallencia had three months. In this movie, Michael Shaw has three weeks. It was a little easier to swallow in Vale Todo because the main character was already something of a hardened fellow with his fair share of life-and-death street brawls. In Tapped Out, our character hasn’t formally trained in seven years and doesn’t have any real-life fighting experience. As a result, it strains credibility that he would be able to really up his game to the level he does in that short of time.

Speaking of fighting experience, the fight scenes were staged by Emilio “Chino” Ramirez, who appears to have been a silver medalist at the 2022 Ontario Open International Jiu-Jitsu Championship—I assume his fight record is more extensive than that. He also starred in the Canadian-Chinese fantasy film Fallen Angel, although I know nothing about that project. What I can say is that the fights are leagues better than what I saw in Fight Valley and Vale Todo, which I watched the same week. The choreography is solid by MMA movie standards (unlike Fight Valley) and the camera lets us see what’s happening (unlike Vale Todo). We’re not quite talking Flash Point-level stuff, but it gets the job done. All the fighters, including Cody Hackman, get a few good fights to show off their skills. It still doesn’t convince me that our protagonist can beat a man-mountain like Krzysztof Soszynski, but it gets the job done for the most part (and even that is more a story issue, then a fight staging one). I still haven’t seen Warrior, but I easily would rank this above Fight Valley; Vale Todo; Fighting; and Unrivaled. And that’s not “great,” but it’s better than nothing.

Vale Todo: Anything Goes (2010)

Vale Todo: Anything Goes (2010)
Aka: One More Round; Fighter; Vale Tudo

 

Starring: Carlos Valencia, Uriel Arce, Christopher Andrews, Lisa Mayo, Royce Gracie, Veronica Suarez
Director: Roberto Estrella
Action Director: n/a

 

Vicente Fernandez (Ecuadorian actor Carlos Valencia) is not having a good day. He is at work on a construction site when he finds out that his (abusive) father has been killed in a car accident. Before he can process what was happening, he arrives at his simple home in the slums of Guayaquil, Ecuador to catch his girlfriend (Veronica Suarez) getting plowed by another man. And she doesn’t even feign remorse, she insults the guy on her way out. And she steals Vicente’s savings, too. He does what most men would probably do: scrounge up what money he has left and buy alcohol.

Life hasn’t been just for Andres “Andy” Bello (Uriel Arce), either. A successful sports agent in the States, Andy is back in Ecuador to recover from a beak-up with his girlfriend. He meets up with his doctor friend and heads to the club with a bunch of pretty girls to drink away his sorrows. He drunkenly escapes the noise for a few moments to buy himself a hot dog from a vendor, only to get jumped by a bunch of muggers. Thankfully for him, Vicente is drinking away his sorrows several feet away. Vicente beats the hell out of the muggers, much to Andy’s surprise.

Andy is more than happy to buy his savior a drink. At the end of the night, Andy takes Vicente to his hotel and shows him a bunch of videos of UFC, which impresses Vicente. Vicente has never trained in any martial arts, but learned how to street fight in order to survive the slums where he grew up. His late father also “encouraged” him to learn to defend himself, usually by paying the neighborhood kids to attack him and then berating him if he didn’t do well. Anyway, Vicente is confident that his own experience with life-and-death fighting will help him where mere training would not and agrees to a proposal by Andy to become a fighter.

Andy takes Vicente to a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school run by Fernando Soluço (a real-life fighter whose name was Fernando di Piero). Andy gives Fernando three months to train Vicente while Andy organizes the guy’s travel papers and what not. Vicente is a quick learner and by the end of the three months, is ready to take on a fighter. Vicente starts off with some underground fights, after which he heads to the states for something more professional…

Vale Todo touts the participation of the legendary Royce Gracie in the film, although he only shows up in a glorified cameo as himself. When Vicente arrives in Southern California, he goes to Gracie’s studio to continue his training while Andy organizes his first fight. But Gracie doesn’t fight in this; he we see him showing Vicente a few moves. So, don’t get your Gracie hopes up.

I would say that the big problem with Vale Todo as a piece of entertainment is that Vicente’s journey never seems to be all that fraught with hardship and unexpected obstacles. His quest to become a fighter feels very bunch a linear A to B to C, with nothing that really generates suspense. No surprise betrayals by his agent. No unexpected attempt to prevent him from getting a passport. No bureaucracy that might stop him from getting into a professional fight. No sudden request for him to throw the fight to appease shady betters. He simply moves from Step 1 to Step 2 and by the end, has become a professional fighter. All of life’s disappointments pile in the first couple of scenes, and then rest is “all gravy.” Also, the scene where Vicente and Andy spend New Year’s Eve at the beach drags on too much.

People who train in mixed martial arts might enjoy some of the training sequences and identify with those scenes. There are two sets of fights. In the first, Vicente participates in a series of underground fights against a random brawler, a Capoeira expert and then a soldier (whom he defeats with a simple choke hold). Then there is the final showdown with an American Muay Thai stylist inside the Octagon. That fight is ruined by too much shaky cam and quick cuts. If you want semi-realistic MMA in a film, watch Redbelt. If you want entertaining and exhilarating MMA film, watch a modern Donnie Yen movie.

As a 90-minute commercial for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Vale Todo might be okay. As an actual film, it’s mediocre at best. 

Fight Valley (2016)

Fight Valley (2016)

 

Starring: Susie Celek, Miesha Tate, Erin O'Brien, Kari J. Kramer, Cabrina Collesides, Chelsea Durkalec, Jefferson Sanders, Ivy Lashawn, Steve Downing, Cris Cyborg, Holly Holm
Director: Rob Hawk
Action Director: Erik Aude

 

It isn’t often that I get completely blindsided by how a bad a film is. In the early days of my movie reviewing, I often used Hot Potato as the gold standard for awful martial arts movies, with a rating based around how many times I would watch a film before considering watching that piece of crap again. My measuring sticks were adjusted by Sunland Heat, a made-in-Brazil low-budgeter with awful fight choreography and the total lack of an actual climax. These days, I occasionally come across a lesser martial arts film, especially while investigating lesser-known movies for my Almanac. But then there’s Fight Valley, which manages to be even worse than Hot Potato and Sunland Heat.

The first few scenes don’t have much to do with anything that comes after, so I get the feeling that writer-director Rob Hawk was retooling the script on set. The story proper—following a series of random scenes involving “Jabs,” played by UFC Bantamweight Champion Miesha Tate—begins with Tori Coro (Chelsea Durkalec), a young woman in Camden, New Jersey, fighting a girl in the park for fifty bucks. Following the fight, she joins up with her friends, Yanni (Suburban Coven’s Kari Kramer) and Jamie (Cabrina Collesides, of Called to Duty and Talons of the Phoenix), and her girlfriend, Duke (Erin O’Brien, of The Wrong Tenant and The Getback). The girls hang out and watch some MMA fight between the aforementioned Jabs and a blonde chick named Payton (Holly “I Beat Ronda Rousey” Holm).  And then go back to Tori’s father’s place for lesbian sex.

Tori wants to get Duke out of the ghetto and to someplace nicer, but like in a lot of these films, lacks the funds to do it. If she were in Detroit, she could try robbing a blind, former Special Forces operative. Instead, she hits her sister, Windsor (Susie Celek), up for money, but there’s some bad blood between them because of stuff that happened when their parents divorced. Tori receives word from some Random White Guy about the opportunity to make big bucks fighting in “The Yard.” Six weeks later, Tori’s dead body is found in a forest. Exit Tori. Stage left.

This is where the film becomes about Windsor. After her sister’s funeral, Windsor leaves her posh house in somewhere that isn’t Camden, NJ, and heads for the hood to find out what happened to her sister. Nobody can give her a straight answer about what happened or what might have happened, probably because Rob Hawk’s script can’t give us a straight answer about anything, either. There’s talk of “Fight Valley” and “fighting in the Valley,” as if those are two different things. I assume “The Valley” refers to a section of the Ghetto. “Fight Valley” is supposed to be some secret place for fighting that you don’t talk about, much like the “Fight Club.” And “The Yard” is a…sub-division of fight valley for high stakes fights. I guess. I didn’t write the script.

Anyway, Duke and the girls take Windsor to see Stakes (Jefferson Sanders, who’s due to appear in the movie’s sequel…God help us all), a rich gym owner who also moonlights as a fight organizer of sorts. Their meeting with Stakes ends up in a big cat fight with über-bitch Gracie (Ivy Lashawn) and a bunch of other hoodrats. Duke is beaten into a coma and taken to the hospital. Re-enter Jabs, who decides to take on Windsor as a student for no apparent reason. Jabs trains Windsor in the art of street fighting so she can survive on the mean streets of Camden, The Murder Capitol of the World, until she’s ready to face off with her sister’s killer: Church (Cris Cyborg, who was 31 when she made this film, but looks like she’s pushing 50).

If you can get past the questionable acting and dialog, the film’s major problem is that the script does not make a lick of sense. The film reeks of a script that was constantly being re-written on the go, possibly(?) because the filmmakers didn’t have their UFC talent on hand for very long. The first few scenes are completely removed from anything we see later: we see Jabs (Miesha Tate) beating an opponent to death during a street fight, a “one year later” intertitle, and then Jabs working at an ice factory. I guess that was the original story: the traumatized fighter who reluctantly gets back into the game. That is followed by Jabs quitting her job to rescue her sister, Kate (whom I also think is Chelsea Durkalec), who was jumped by Gracie and her hoodrat henchmen. But none of that gets mentioned again, so I’m guessing the story was re-written and director Hawk just kept that footage in.

The movie also brings up the shady white guy who gets Tori involved in “The Yard,” but he never shows up in the film again. The rest of the story makes it look like “The Yard” is managed solely by Stakes and his buddy, Gamble (Steve Downing, who also is set to appear in the film’s sequel…Why, God? Why?). What was the deal with the white guy? There is also a flashback where we see Tori going to see Stakes to set up a fight, picking a brawl at Stakes’s hideout, and being put in an arm-bar by Cris Cyborg and possibly choked to death. Another flashback at the end shows that Cris choked her to death in an arm-bar, but in another location. So, was that a plot inconsistency? Or was Tori such a dumb broad that she got her ass handed to her in side brawl with Cyborg, and then willingly accepted a challenge to get beat down by Cyborg again?

Speaking of beatdowns, the fighting in this movie is pretty awful. It feels like uncoordinated brawling. I mean, bar fights in old John Wayne movies were more satisfying than the scuffles in this, and this movie employed three UFC champions! People who want to complain about Donnie Yen’s Special I.D. and stuff like that really need to re-appraise that film as a modern-day classic compared to this dreck. Us fans occasionally talk about how good screen fighters not being able to beat people in real-life fights, but often the opposite can also be true: some good fighters in the ring simply don’t look good onscreen. Oh, Benny “the Jet” and Keith Vitali did, I’ll give you that. But for every one of them, you have your Don “the Dragon” Wilson’s and your Dale “Apollo” Cook’s…and now, your Miesha Tate’s, Holly Holm’s and Cris Cyborg’s. Yeesh. And crappy fighting is the just final nail in the coffin of this awful film, which, did I tell is getting a sequel? May God have mercy on us all!

Jiu Jitsu (2020)

Jiu Jitsu (2020)

Starring: Alain Moussi, Nicolas Cage, Frank Grillo, Tony Jaa, JuJu Chan, Rick Yune, Eddie Steeples, Marie Avgeropoulos, Marrese Crump, Ryan Tarran
Director: Dimitri Logothetis
Action Director: Supoj Khaowwong

 

Jiu Jitsu is such a bait-and-switch title for the film we actually got. If you just here the name, you’ll imagine some sort of MMA drama like Warrior, or a less savory approach to the material, like the works of Hector Ecchavaria. When the Project was announced in late 2018, it was established from the outset that the film would be a sci-fi actioner. A strange title for a martial arts movie in a sci-fi setting, but whatever. It would probably be in the vein of Heatseeker, we all thought. I enjoyed Heatseeker, it’s low budget notwithstanding, so an updated version of that would have been fun.

About three months after the production was announced, we were given an official plot synopsis sounded like it was a stealth remake of Mortal Kombat, replacing “Outworlders” with regular alien invaders. I then saw the trailer at about the time the movie came out in the States, and the result was something a little closer to the Predator franchise. Likewise, the early reviews seemed to focus on the similarities between the movie and Predator, which seems like a daft combination to be sure. So, what exactly is Jiu Jitsu?

We open with a soldier, Jake (Alain Moussi, of the recent Kicboxer reboot films), getting chased through the forests of Myanmar (played by Cypress) by an invisible opponent firing shuriken at him. He eventually gets hit twice in the back as he reaches a cliff, falling into the water and hitting his head on a rock. He miraculously doesn’t drown, but floats along the river until he is rescued by Nicolas Cage and handed over to a fisherman and his wife. They in turn take him to a local American military base (!) in order to avoid trouble.

When Jake finally regains consciousness, he is interrogated by Army Intelligence officer Myra (Marie Avgeropoulos, of Tracers and the series “The 100”). Although Jake learns that Uncle Sam has set up shop in Myanmar in order to steal its plutonium deposits, he himself is suffering from amnesia so the Army doesn’t get anything out of him. One day, a fighter named Kueng (Tony Jaa, of Ong Bak and Triple Threat) shows up at the outpost and kicks the holy shit out of all of the soldiers, rescuing Jake, whom he seems to know.

Kueng takes Jake to meet a bunch of other martial artists, including Harrigan (Frank Grillo, The Purge: Anarchy and Beyond Skyline) and Carmen (Juju Chan Szeto, of Fist of the Dragon and Savage Dog). The latter appears to have been a relationship with Jake, which really takes him aback. Before he can really learn what’s going on, they are attacked by an invisible force, followed by the arrival of the American military. The martial artists are more than capable of fending for themselves against the Yanks, although Jake gets himself recaptured by Myra. At this point, Jake remembers enough to warn the Army to get the heck out of dodge, since whatever is out there in the jungle is more than enough for the military. So, Myra, Jake and Colonel Sands (Rick Yune, of The Fast and the Furious and Die Another Day) take a platoon out into the jungle to investigate what’s going on. The platoon is quickly slaughtered by an unknown enemy and Jake, while escaping, finds the underground hideout of Wylie, played by Nicolas Cage.

Wylie fills Jake on the plot: Thousands of years ago, an immortal alien lifeform known as as “Brax” came to the Earth when a passing comet opened a portal to his world. He gave the world a gift: Jiu Jitsu. However, in exchange for this gift, Brax made an ultimatum: every six years (when the comet returned), mankind would have to make an “offering” of its nine best martial artists in order to placate Brax’s desire to fight. Otherwise, he’ll just start killing people indeterminately. As it stands, Brax has never been defeated, so the nine best fighters are basically sacrificed for the Greater Good every six years. Apparently, Jake was one of the nine fighters for this most recent offering, but ended up trying to flee, which is where we met him at the beginning of the film. The question is: will he be man enough to face his destiny and take on Brax, even when all the odds are against him?

As of January 2023, Jiu Jitsu holds a 2.9 rating at the Internet Movie Database, which is extremely low. I can’t help but wonder how much that has to do with the cognitive dissonance generated by the disconnect between the film’s title (and one’s expectations based on said title) and the actual storyline, which is a strange amalgamation of Predator and Mortal Kombat. I also think it has a lot to do with the treatment of the term of Jiu Jitsu, which in this case, is used as an umbrella term for “Martial Arts” in general, as opposed to the Japanese martial art developed in the 16^th century. Although there is a fair amount of Jiu Jitsu and ground fighting in this movie, there are other styles on display, ranging from tae kwon do to Muay Thai. I don’t think it was a good idea to use Jiu Jitsu in the title, no matter how many holds and breaks Alain Moussi performs in his fights.

Jiu Jitsu is an odd duck, no doubt about it. As I mentioned before, melding Predator with Mortal Kombat seems counterintuitive. The explanation for the MK approach to the alien’s modus operandi is a Chariots of the Gods retcon of history that suggests that Asian Martial Arts as we know them were given to us by extraterrestrials. The problem with that particular approach is that one character states that the whole Brax “tournament” has been going on for 2000 years. But martial arts had existed in China, including open-handed combat, weapons and wrestling, since the Shang Dynasty, almost 4000 years ago. So the timelines don’t really line up.

The film does have a very good cast, including the ever-meme friendly Nicolas Cage as Wylie, a fighter who’d dodged his destiny in the showdown with Brax six years prior. He plays his role with the expected Cage quirkiness, albeit stops short of going into his infamous overacting extremes. Alain Moussi is pretty one note in his role, but does well enough in his fight scenes to justify his presence in the film. Frank Grillo isn’t given a whole lot to work with, but he has a likable everyman feeling about him, even in a film like this. The only actor whose inclusion is questionable is Rick Yune as Colonel Sands: he is introduced by the characters talking to him, though he himself is off camera. Later, when the Army takes to the jungle, he just shows up in the scene. Why all the secrecy with regards to his character in the previous scenes? I suppose something was left on the editing room floor.

The action was staged by Supoj Khaowwong and Alain Moussi, the former being known for his work on the two Kickboxer reboot movies, which starred Moussi. I thought the fights were fairly solid for the most part. The best moments went to Tony Jaa, giving us one of his best fighting performances since the passing of Panna Rittikrai. His intro fight at the army base plays like a sequel to his infamous one-take restaurant fight from The Protector, with the camera following him as he makes his way around the base, beating up anyone who gets in his way. That same fight then involves Moussi, at which point it switches into first-person perspective á la The Villainess.

Marrese Crump, who stole the show in Tom Yum Goong 2, plays one of the Chosen Ones and does some nice work with a metal pole that can break off into two mini-spears. His kicks are fast and powerful, not to mention very agile. Tae kwon do champ Juju Chan doesn’t get to fight a lot, but she does impress with her nunchaku skills early on against the American soldiers. Don’t expect much from Frank Grillo: he fights some guys with two-fisted daggers, but that’s about it. The other Chosen Fighters are played by Thai model (?) June Sasitorn, Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert Rigan Machado, and veteran stuntman Dan Rizzuto, whose choreographer credits include Boss Level and Wu Assassins. Their fights, however, are short and not very flashy.

Brax the “Poetic Warrior” (to quote Nicolas Cage’s character) is played by Ryan Tarran, a veteran Hollywood stuntman. His credits include Alien: Covenant and Thor: Ragnarok, where he doubled for Chris Hemsworth on occasion. Brax fights with a mixture of jiu jitsu, sword fighting and spear fighting. His throwdowns with Marrese Crump, Nicolas Cage (and his stunt double) and finally Alain Moussi are satisfying for the most part. I was satisfied with the action on display, even though there was a bit too much slow-mo. The editing was clean for the most part, except when needed to hide Cage’s double. I don’t think the film should have been called Jiu Jitsu, from both an action and story standpoint. What would have been better? The Martial Arts? Bushido? Bujutsu? The Art of Fighting? The Warrior Arts?

The Trigonal: Fight for Justice (2018)

The Trigonal: Fight for Justice (2018)

Starring: Ian Ignacio, Rhian Ramos, Sarah Chang, Gus Liem, Monsour Del Rosario, Paul Allica, Christian Vasquez, Jeffrey Quizon, Vincent Soberano
Director: Vincent Soberano
Action Director: Sarah Chang

 

I wonder if movies like this and Maria are signs that Filipino genre cinema is due for a mainstream comeback. That would certainly be encouraging, considering that the Thai revolution died with Panna Rittikrai and Tony Jaa mainly just takes thankless roles in Hollywood and Hong Kong movies now. Indonesian cinema seemed poised for greatness, but Gareth Evans, who started it with Merantau and The Raid films, has now moved past that phase while actor Iko Uwais, like Tony Jaa, seems to be cast in mediocre Western projects.

Actually, Filipino cinema is a complex creature. There have been several “strains” of cinema over the decades. One would be Tagalog cinema, which has been around the longest. Then, around the 50s and 60s, there shot up a parallel industry whose business model consisted of making genre and exploitation films for international consumption. These included horror movies, like the infamous “Blood Island” movies and Terror is a Man (1958); martial arts movies, like T.N.T. Jackson and some of Ron Marchini’s films; “women in prison” fare; and even sci-fi adventures starring people like Patrick Wayne. Roger Corman often found himself producing movies in the Philippines, often alongside his opposite number there, Cirio H. Santiago.

In the 1990s, the Philippines became the place for once-bankable Hong Kong action stars to make movies and pay the bills. This included Shaw Brothers actor Philip Ko Fei, Cynthia Khan, Yuen Biao, and Yukari Oshima, the latter of whom went by “Cynthia Luster” there. In fact, Miss Oshima has a huge following in the Philippines to this very day, as evidenced by a FB group consisting of mainly Filipino people (many of whom are younger than yours truly). Concurrently, with the stateside success of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, Roger Corman and Cirio Santiago also kept making martial arts movies there in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including a plethora of films starring Jerry Trimble. As the 1990s drew to a close, Filipino cinema largely fell off the map. And this is where movies like The Trigonal come in.

The movie tells the story of Jacob Casa (BuyBust’s Ian Ignacio) an MMA fighter—he usually refers to himself as a karate master—with a dojo in the Philippines. His wife, Annie (the beautiful Rhian Ramos), has recently announced her pregnancy and Jacob is sincerely overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a father. But any chance of nine months of blissful baby preparation is flushed down the toilet by a number of problems. For one, as popular as the dojo seems to be, it isn’t making enough money to pay the bills, including the initial loan that was taken out to open it. Moreover, Annie is growing increasingly weary with her hubby’s attempts to complement his income with professional bouts, especially now that fatherhood is on the horizon.

Those issues, however, pale in comparison with what’s to come. Urban legends in the martial arts community have floated of a tournament known as “The Trigonal,” a no-holds barred, fight to death series of matches for only the most elite fighters in the world. Well, one day some Filipino gangbanger types led by Allen (Christian Vasquez, who overacts so miserably he threatens to sink the entire production) show up at the dojo with an invitation to The Trigonal. Before Jacob has a chance to think over the proposition, Annie kicks the men out of the dojo. This, my friends, is where things go south.

When Allen reports his failure to his boss, the elusive drug lord Henry Tan (Gus Liem), Allen gets such a chewing out that he returns to town madder than hell. So, he and his flunkies show up at Jacob’s dojo while the latter is having drinks with one of Tan’s Jezebels and beat his assistant instructor Dodoy (Jeffrey Quizon) to death. Unfortunately for Annie, she’s also at the dojo and gets herself raped and beaten for her troubles. They also leave his school in shambles, but that’s really the least of Casa’s problems, isn’t it?

Jacob initially doesn’t know that Allen is behind the attack—and that he wasn’t working on Tan’s orders when he did—but the chance to make a million dollars American is enough to convince him to participate in the elimination round. After all, he now has his debts and his wife’s medical bills to consider. He finds out that Tan’s specialty is a super-steroid called “Green Dragon” and that most of the participants in the elimination round are hopped up on the stuff. What he doesn’t know is that Tan has prepared an even stronger new drug, “Buddha Gold,” and that the Trigonal is less a tournament and more of drug exhibition show for potential buyers and dealers.

Most commentaries of this movie compare it to 80s and early 90s martial arts films, like Kickboxer and Bloodsport. In a lot of ways, that is apt. The Filipino setting of the tournament brings to mind the 1995 Albert Pyun film Heatseeker, which was also set there. The use of weapons in the tournament brings to mind rip-offs of those films, like American Samurai and Shootfighter. The fact that the founder of the tournament of is a drug dealer with his own private island is very much Mr. Han of Enter of the Dragon.

Sadly, the film also mimics Enter the Dragon in that the tournament has no sensical structure to it. I can understand the preliminary round in order to enter the Trigonal itself. But the Trigonal consists of four parallel matches between an “outside” fighter and one of Tan’s fighters. No quarterfinals. No semi-finals. Just four separate matches. That wouldn’t be a problem, but then how do you determine the champion? The movie says that the champion will walk home with a million-dollar prize…so if all four of the incoming fighters won their respective matches, how do you determine the winner? In theory, you would do semi-finals and then a final bout. Here, two incoming fighters win their respective matches, but Jacob is declared the champion. What? And the other guy?

The action was choreographed by Chinese-American wushu stylist Sarah Chang, who shows up as a Chinese kung fu expert who assists Jacob. Chang has spent much of limited career in Asia, mainly focusing her work in the Philippines and Taiwan. She doubled for Celina Jade in the Mainland Chinese blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2 and is now set to have a role in Scott Adkins’s Accident Man 2. There are not many female fight choreographers there; the only other one I can think of is Shaw Brothers actress Yeung Ching-Ching, who assisted Tony Ching Siu-Tung on the Royal Tramp movies and Legend of the Liquid Sword. So I’m glad to see Chang pave the way for future female action directors.

Unfortunately, her work is almost completely ruined by bad editing and photography. The cinematographer uses mainly medium shots for the action, which is okay for punching, but too close for the footwork. Moreover, the fights are often shot from angles that do the fighters no justice. For example, when a character performs a jumping spin kick, do you want to film it from behind the guy on the receiving end? No, because the guy’s body will obscure the move. But they do that here and quite a lot. Some of the fights suffer from Shaky Cam syndrome, notably an emotionally-charged bar fight between Jacob and Alan.

When you can see the action, it’s pretty much 90s style choreography with MMA ground fighting thrown in for good measure. It is what you might expect from a martial arts movie made in 2018. Director Vincent Soberano, who also plays a policeman, has a fight with a drug chemist that is very close-quarters and economical, like what you might see in The Raid or any modern spy movie. The Trigonal Fights have a weapons round and an open hands round. As a result, we get to see fighters duke it out with kali sticks, knives and double-edged spears. Once again, the weapons choreography is very Hollywood 90s, think American Samurai. There’s a pretty good fight between Choy Li Fut’s Mekeal Turner, playing a Brazilian capoeira stylist, and UFC fighter Li Jingliang during the Trigonal segment. Be on the lookout for Filipino action veteran Monsour del Rosario (Tough Beauty and Sloppy Slop and Lethal Panther 2) as Jacob’s teacher: he gets to disarm and take down some baddies at the climax. I’d suppose that Ian Ignacio’s escrima duel with Australian actor Paul Allica (who trained under a member of Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association) would be the highlight of the action.

Now that we’ve established that the action is decent, albeit hampered by bad camerawork, how does the rest of the movie fare? Not very well. The dialog is inane, with there being way too many F-bombs in place of anything thoughtful. It gets silly after a while. There is also a bad bit of “tell, not show” where Jacob mentions that Sarah Chang’s character is helping him integrate kung fu into his fighting style, but we never actually see it. Bad writing, folks. The acting ranges from pretty decent to laughably awful, with Christian Vasquez’s scenery-chewing performance as Alan making Yu Rong-Guang’s overacting in My Father is a Hero look restrained in comparison.

The Trigonal: Fight for Justice had the potential to be good, but the script needed another revision, and they needed a Hong Kong team on hand to shoot and edit the fights. I do hope that Sarah Chang goes on to bigger and better things as time passes. Finally, what is up with Filipino movies and their little people? We have a random dwarf show up as one of the fight announcers. Amusingly enough, he gets kicked by a drug-addled Paul Allica at the climax…RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A DWARF!!!

Unrivaled (2010)

Unrivaled (2010)

 

Starring: Hector Echavarria, Steven Yaffee, Nicholas Campbell, Jordan Madley, Ashleigh Hubbard, Al Sapienza, Keith Jardine, Rashad Evans, Ryan Robbins, Nathan Marquardt, Desmond Campbell, Tig Fong
Director: Warren P. Sonoda
Action Director: Hector Echavarria

A year or so ago, my book was cited in an article at the South China Morning Post. The author referred to me as “martial arts expert Blake Matthews,” which is a bit of a stretch. However, that was enough to get me away from writing a book about Japanese giant monster movies that nobody would read and have me focusing on the niche of martial arts cinema. Not that I would ever become good enough to be an expert, but I could at least try.

In order to be an expert, I guess I should be willing to dig around the corners that I never did as a teenager when I was renting A Better Tomorrow or Hard Boiled for the fifth time. Man, to imagine how many films I would have on my “Watched” list had I not found The Undaunted Wudang interesting enough for a third rental. Well, that was back in the late 90s. Now we’re in 2022, and up until this evening, I had never seen a Hector Echavarria movie. While Maximum Risk was sort of the first mainstream movie to really try to bring ground fighting into the usual martial arts hokum, I think it was Echavarria who really tried to build a film career and business model off of the growing popularity of MMA and UFC.

According to his Wikipedia article—which I assume was written by him or someone from his native Argentina, considering all the grammar errors in the text—Echavarria was born in Argentina who started learning taiqi quan as a way of treating his asthma. By the time he reached his teenage years, he had already mastered the art, plus judo and jiu-jitsu. So, he added tae kwon do and karate to his résumé as well. He had a successful professional fighting career, accumulating 11 world titles in kickboxing. Concurrently with his fighting career, he also started acting in his native Argentina, headlining in a highly-successful film Los Extermineitors and its sequel.

In 2001, Echavarria started his American career alongside Michel “Tong Po” Qissi and his brother, Yousef, in Extreme Force. Although the film has a low rating at the IMDB (3.8/10), the reviews concede that Echavarria is indeed a skilled martial artist. After a couple of other movies, including a small role in the Jet Li flick Cradle 2 the Grave, Echavarria was ready for the spotlight with Confessions of a Pit Fighter. He quickly became notorious for low-budget MMA films that bordered on softcore pornography. Tonight’s film, Unrivaled, follows that trend.

We open with our hero, Ringo Duran (Echavarria), getting ready for a small-time MMA bout. His opponent, Luca “The Brute” Popoff (“Strikeforce” welterweight champion Nathan Marquardt), is a dirty cheat and beats him into submission with a makeshift brass knuckles that the ref is too stupid notice. A humiliated Duran leaves the match and heads to the strip club where he works as a barista. There, we learn a few things: 1) Duran sort of has a crush on his co-worker, Kara (Shark City’s Jordan Madley); 2) Duran has a $20,000 debt with a loan shark named Sergio Ponzo (prolific character actor Al Sapienza); and 3) Echavarria and director Warren P. Sonoda love the female body. While strip club scenes often provide the movie with background breasts with the occasional close-up for red-blooded males, this movie practically shows entire routines.

Ponzo gives Duran a month to pay off his debt, which considering his losing fight record and strip club barista salary, is a hard order. Adding insult to injury is arrival of a jerk-off bruiser named Alonso Scott (Keith Jardine, who had a role in Logan) at the gym Duran trains at. Scott is an arrogant a**hole who belittles Duran every chance he gets. Must be hard to know that you’re about to die a “never-was.”

Things change when MMA champion Apollo Creed Christopher “The Pressure” Holland (The Ultimate Fighter heavyweight winner Rashad Evans) decides to hold a special amateur tournament with the promise of the winner going pro…against Chris himself. Unbeknownst to Ringo, his groupie and training partner Link (Steven Yaffee) has signed him up for the tournament. Although Chris Holland is against the idea of a never-was like Ringo participating, his company’s CEO likes the underdog angle (shades of Rocky) and brings him in. Now Ringo has a shot at the big money, not to mention the opportunity to give his career a modicum of dignity. But this particular road to success will have more than its fair share of bumps.

To use a Stallone analogy, Unrivaled is two parts Rocky and one part The Party at Kitty and Stud’s. Seriously, I haven’t seen this much female flesh in a martial arts film since Lethal Panther, but it comes close to matching Challenge of the Tiger in terms of quantity. The thing is that you have a decent little underdog sports movie in here, but the first act is so distracted with the boobs and pubic hairs of the strip club’s employees that it cheapens the movie’s attempt at real drama later. And I was honestly feeling for Ringo’s plight at the end, so there is a good movie hiding behind bare buns and breasts. I’m sure that Hector Echavarria had progressed enough as an actor by this point—he’s no Tom Hardy in Warrior, but he suffices for a DTV effort—that he could have sold this film on the drama and his own martial prowess. He didn’t need the filler that would please drunken frat boy UFC fans.

The action, choreographed by Hector Echavarria himself (and with the other professional fighters in the cast serving as “Fight Consultants”), is disappointing. Let’s put it this way: the camera lingers on the strippers’ nipples longer than it does the combatants. The editing is hyperactive, with an average one punch per cut. That gets annoying very quickly. The characters take more face punches than your average real-life MMA fighter could take, but as this is a film, I’ll cut it slack there. But since we’re applying movie logic here, I would have hoped that there’d be more flashy kicks to break up the monotonous Mississippi haymaker punches that compose the bulk of the fights.

As a fan of tournament fights, I was disappointed that Alonso Scott’s first fight in the tournament wasn’t given the onscreen treatment. I mean, this is a 4-fight tournament: Semi-finals, Finals, and then a final fight with Holland. In a 108-minute movie, you can easily squeeze in what the characters describe as an 11-second fight into the running time. Instead, we see two seconds of the fight on a TV screen and that’s it. Bad action direction here, folks.

The other problem with the fights is a story point, but it is an issue for me. The whole gambling debt subplot bleeds into the main story when Sergio the loan shark decides to get in on the racket. What it means is that one combatant is paid to take the fall during the tournament. So, the one fight that arguably had the most emotional resonance to it is largely a one-sided affair because of this specific subplot. It makes sense from a storytelling POV, but as a fight junkie, I can’t help but feel gypped.

I’m really not going run out and comb all the failing video stores (or the Brazilian equivalent to Ebay) to look for DVDs of Echavarria’s other films. If I want MMA in my movies, I’ll content myself to Donnie Yen’s contributions. This one had promise, but was spoiled by the unnecessary amount of T&A. His films before this look like they don’t even have that initial promise…