★★★
“I am Jim’s Complete Lack of Surprise.”
Reading the comments on YouTube, there’s an awful lot of “inspirational” and “motivational” to be found there, and these are not wrong. This is as template-based a sports movie as you can imagine, to the point that it feels almost more like a Victorian melodrama, in terms of its saintly heroine, fighting (literally) for what she believes in. This sort of thing would normally be completely ludicrous, and isn’t helped by James Schafer’s soundtrack, which leaves no orchestral cliché uncued. However… I found a genuine sincerity on display here, helped by a very good performance from Stone, and this really sells the sub-Hallmark conceit at its core. Her character believes, so you do.
She plays up-and-coming amateur MMA fighter Jackie DeSpain, whose life has issues. She lives with her junkie sister Marie, whose little daughter Grace (Darling), is simply as adorable as a boxful of kittens. This situation preys on Jackie’s mind, causing her to lose a fight against Kate ‘The Killer’ Kinsella, much to the concern of her trainer, Hank (Wade). For when I say “lose”, we’re deep in “beaten to a pulp” territory. Though a positive is, this brings her into contact with hunky doctor Oliver (Akers). After Marie overdoses, Grace is taken away by the authorities, but if Jackie can just win enough fights to turn pro, then maybe she can convince a judge that she should have custody of her niece, while Marie rehabs.
You should easily be able to figure out from the above, where everything is going to go the rest of the way, and the film does not deviate from that template an iota. Will there be training montages? Could there be an injury threatening to derail Jackie’s plans? Might there be – oh, I’m just speculating here – blossoming romance between Jackie and Oliver? I’ll never tell. But despite the resolute predictability of proceedings, I remained engaged to a greater degree than you would imagine. Lyde has directed a number of films we’ve reviewed here, most recently Scarlett, also starring Stone, and the action here is good. If the MMA fights are somewhat stylized, they’re still credible, and have more impact than I was expecting.
There is, however, a curious lack of any antagonist here: just about everybody is nice: even the social worker who whisks Grace away into the care of the state is quite apologetic about it. Kinsella is likely the closest, yet she is more of an obstacle than an enemy, vanishing completely from the film between her fights against Despain. Despite the lack of dramatic conflict, and a large dose of the review tagline (top) as things wound there way forward, I bought into Jackie’s situation, and unquestionably found myself cheering her on. While this may be the simplest of stories, I found it executed well enough to overcome the limitations of its plot.
Dir: John Lyde
Star: Melanie Stone, Jasen Wade, Isaac Akers, Rosie Darling
[The film is available now on YouTube and is embedded below]