Tag: mma/boxing

Ring Girls

  By

★★★
“Punches above its weight.”

This dates back from 2005, before Carano was a household name in the world of mixed martial arts, or a somewhat successful actress. At this point, she was only involved in the sport of muay thai, which as it’s name suggests, is a martial art originating in Thailand. She was one of five girls training in Las Vegas under Toddy – a nickname given because the teacher’s real name of Thohsaphol Sitiwatjana was too unpronounceable to Westerners! The goal of both Toddy and his students was a trip to Thailand to take on the best local practitioners of the sport. This “documentary” covers both their training and the visit itself, climaxing with Carano’s battle against the Thai champion.

Quotes are used advisedly around documentary, because of two elements – neither of which help the film. The first is some kind of beef, I’m guessing entirely fabricated, between Toddy and his brother “Master A”, who is a muay thai trainer back in Thailand. Apparently Toddy brought disrespect to the country by teaching their skills to foreign devils or something. [I think this may have been lifted from the life of Bruce Lee?] It’s a bit silly and pointless, but at least it can easily be ignored. Worse are the fake sounds added to the fights, when punches and kicks land. They’re not even well done, and rather than enhancing things, make the contests seem fake.

This is unfortunate, as there’s otherwise a lot to like here. Even though an unknown at the time, you can see why the film focuses on Carano, who is clearly not just the best fighter, even to my amateur eyes, she is also the most charismatic. Sometimes, this works against it: we barely get to learn the results of the other four fights in Thailand. But it mainly helps, like a low-budget movie which lucks into starring a future Oscar winner [hello, Cyborg 2!]. And despite the post-audio’s relentless attempts to derail things, the fights are quite impressive, with the impact of the blows apparent purely from the visual side, such as the reaction of the punchee.

It all makes for a rather inconsistent blend of fact and fiction, and everyone involved would have been better served by deciding in which camp they stood. If fictional, develop a better narrative, with setbacks (at the risk of spoilering, I’m not sure we see any of the girls ever lose a match). Or go strictly factual, and use the time spent on things like Toddy’s family issues, perhaps to give us deeper background on the fighters. Heck, more info on the Thai women would have been welcome, too, comparing and contrasing life in Bangkok to Las Vegas. However, you should not let these criticisms put you off watching this (I stumbled across it on Amazon Prime), as it’s still an interesting insight into the tough world of women (or the world of tough women?) in martial arts.

Dir: Jennifer Ferrara + Thomas Weber
Star: Gina Carano, Master Toddy, Ardra Hernandez, Lisa King

Kiss Kiss

  By

★★½
“Weaponized strippers. What could go wrong?”

Four exotic dancers go on a trip to vineyard, courtesy of a customer at their club. However, they get more than they bargained for, falling unconscious and waking up to find themselves test subject in a scientific experiment run by Gibson (Wagner – no, not that one). He is attempting to convince the military-industrial complex to invest in his project to create “super soldiers”. To this end, he has a serum which vastly enhances both aggression and compliance, and has invited Senator Graham (Farino) to witness a test, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Oh, who am I trying to kid: he actually just shoots up the strippers with the serum and makes them fight to their deaths. In sports bikinis. And face-paint. In subdued yet artistic lighting. Because science! And that’s how government funding works!

It’s every bit as silly as it sounds. Unfortunately, it’s probably not as entertaining. It’s as if the editors of Maxim rented a copy of Raze, and decided to do an unofficial remake for their target demographic. They just forgot to bring along any of the significant players, leading to a result which is more pale imitation than loving homage. Even beyond the color filters, King does shoot proceedings with a good deal of style, and certainly no excess of slow-motion. Though he mixes this up with over-kinetic editing, e.g. showing the same punch landing from multiple different angles in quick succession. This can, however, only go so far in covering up that the fights are no more than average.

It’s never clear quite why the protagonists have to be strippers. Even during the opening scenes, where we see them “at work,” they don’t actually show any significant skin, and it’s weird having them called each other by stage names, like Kiss (Hopkins) and Promise (Castellon). I will admit that I knew some dancers back in my youth, and they never used the fake names outside. It may backfire, in that these pseudonyms repress the feeling these are real people, and I certainly didn’t feel any significant connection to the victims. Instead, it feels for much of the time like you are watching video-game: a well-rendered one, it has to be admitted, though one where the cut scenes go on considerably longer than normal.

To that end, I did quite enjoy Wagner, who chews the scenery to good, “mad scientist” effect. His performance reaches the point that the silly trappings (I mean, do we really need an electric fence around the ring?) begin to make weirdly flamboyant sense. You can even believe his scientific research establishment has a whole team of hair and make-up artists, to ensure the test subjects never have a lock or lick of mascara out of place, despite repeatedly brawling each other in the dirt. But in the end, it’s all just too daft. 35 years ago, it would, however, have made an excellent Duran Duran video.

Dir: Dallas King
Star: Natascha Hopkins, Robert Wagner, Nathalia Castellon, Julia Farino

Yasmine

  By

★★½
“Cliches are cliches, in any language.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film from Brunei. I definitely haven’t seen an action heroine one. So I was keen to see this. Unfortunately, the results prove that over-familiar story elements know no international borders. Yasmine (Yus) is a moderately rebellious teenager, just starting college. She has a long-standing crush on a champion in silat, the local martial art, and to get his attention, joins the (rather small – as in, there are two other members) silat club at the college. She convinces her unwilling coach to enter them for the national tournament; but can she and her pals acquire the necessary skills to win the tournament and make Yasmine’s crush fall for her?

This is solid and even impressive from a technical point of view – especially considering I subsequently discovered this was either the country’s first or second commercial feature – sources vary – for half a century [Brunei’s last home-produced film was a guide to being a good citizen, produced in the sixties by the ministry of religious affairs!] It’s the script which needs some work, to put it mildly. I can only presume, never mind lacking film-making experience, those concerned had never seen a movie of the genre. Because what you get is basically a 109-minute montage of celluloid stereotypes. We march with cinematic inevitability, from her strict father’s (Rahadian) loving disapproval, through a crippled master of silat and the heroine flirting with the dark side, to the climatic confrontation with her nemesis. On the way, of course, Yasmine learns what the true meaning of the sport is. A clue: it’s not about getting a boyfriend. Who knew?

What mainly stops it from toppling over into entirely unwatchable saccharine are the characters. In particular, Yasmine herself generally comes over as likable and independent, rather than projecting “bratty entitlement,” as is often the case in teenage actresses. She gets good support from her club-mates (the tank-like Wahid and Songkono), and also the club coach (Dwi Sasono). He may not know quite as much about the subject as he claims, which is why his students have to seek external guidance. While the martial arts are nowhere near as hard-hitting as its Indonesian counterparts (The Raid or The Night Comes For Us), they’re competent enough. It no doubt helps there, the makers brought in Chan Man-ching, who has worked with Jackie Chan.

He can’t save the script, however. The kind of obvious melodramatic nonsense we get in volume here, might just have passed muster thirty-five years ago, when The Karate Kid came out. That’s the closest cousin to this, and I don’t feel it’s a movie which has aged well. I’m somewhat impressed by a Muslim country – even a progressive one like Brunei – choosing an action heroine for a rare foray into commercial film-making. However, I can think of any number of movies which they would have been better off imitating. And that is even allowing for the obviously family-friendly intent apparent in this well-intentioned yet ultimately flawed production.

Dir: Siti Kamaluddin
Star: Liyana Yus, Nadiah Wahid, Roy Songkono, Reza Rahadian

Saala Khadoos

  By

★★★
“A maniac training a rebel.”

Despite thrashing virtually every sports cliché under the sun into the ground, this just about manages to skate by on the energy of its two central performances. Adi Tomar (Madhavan) is a boxing coach who gets hit with a trumped-up #MeToo charge by the head of the boxing association Dev Khatri (Hussain), and punted off to the backwoods of Chennai. There, however, he finds a raw jewel in Madhi (Singh), a fish-seller whose sister, Lakshmi (Sorcar), has been training as boxer with an eye to joining the police. But it’s Madhi’s aggression which attracts Adi’s attention, and he eventually convinces her to strap on the gloves.

From here unfolds, pretty much, exactly everything you would expect. Parental disapproval. Sibling rivalry. Madhi mistaking Adi’s devotion to her for something romantic. And, especially inevitably, Dev seeking to sabotage Adi’s hard work and claim the credit of Madhi’s success for himself. It all builds to the finals of the world championships – apparently a team sport – where Madhi goes up against Russian nemesis Natalia Riker, who battered her to a pulp in an earlier match [albeit with various extenuating circumstances]. If the Russki doesn’t quite snarl, “I must break you” before the contest, she might as well do. And if at least avoiding full-blown musical numbers, the songs all but required by Bollywood show up in the form of so many montages, they could form the basis for a drinking game.

I suspect this was inspired by the success of Mary Kom, and has much the same strengths and weaknesses. The makers seem to think that making a woman the central character is enough to offset the hackneyed story. Do not, however, take this as meaning the film is devoid of entertainment. For as mentioned, both leads crackle, and the tag-line on top accurately sums their relationship; it’s a lot of fun to watch develop, as they spar, both verbally and physically. Madhavan certainly looks the part of a former boxer, and although Singh could do with some more definition on her arms, makes up for in pure, undiluted Attitood (spelling and capital letter entirely deliberate) what she may lack in musculature.

That said, the boxing scenes are effectively enough staged that I could overlook the heroine’s wispiness, and this is considerably slicker all-round than the last Bollywood film I stumbled across on Netflix, Warrior Savitri. The cinematography is particularly effective, helping to generate a good volume of raw emotion, and this in turn helps distract from the thoroughly generic “underdog makes good” level of the story. It may even manage to catch an unwary viewer with the occasionally effective shot, such as when Madhi says to her coach, after he has just had to make a very difficult, personal decision: “You gave up everything, just for me. If that isn’t love, what is?” Ouch. If perhaps a low blow, it’s still a line that packs a wallop.

Dir: Sudha Kongara
Star: Ritika Singh, R. Madhavan, Zakir Hussain, Mumtaz Sorcar
a.k.a. Irudhi Suttru

Fighting Belle

  By

★½
“Hell is belles.”

Oh, dear. A misbegotten concept – Sweet Home Alabama crossed with Rocky – doubles down with shaky execution, and a non-stop parade of painfully obvious cliches in both characters and plot, to startlingly poor effect. As evidence of the first, imagine a film about a man, dumped by his girlfriend, who decides that beating her up is appropriate revenge. This would not exactly be anyone’s idea of comedy gold. But the makers here think that, simply by reversing the genders, it becomes so. They are very much mistaken. I believe I laughed once.

The heroine is southern belle Delilah (Harthcock), veteran of many a beauty pageant: we can tell, because virtually every scene sees her wearing a “Miss Mint Julep” sash or similar. Yeah, guess I’ll quote the master of sarcasm, Edmund Blackadder: “I thank God I wore my corset, because I think my sides have split.” Anyway, she is jilted at the altar by asshole fiancé Kelvin (Czerwonko), and decides to get back at him by challenging her ex, a former pugilist, to a boxing match. She goes to the local gym, convinces the sceptical Tandy (Cook) to train her, and…

Well, you can guess the rest. Trust me: the previous statement isn’t critical hyperbole. You could literally write down ten plot points that have been done to death in this kind of film, and I’d wager at least seven of them would be delivered here. Family opposition? Check. Delilah falls for Tandy? Check. Befriends the gym’s tough girl, Slice (Pierre)? Check. Heart-warming finale? Double-check. That this manages to take an hour and fifty-one minutes to get there, however, is testament to some impressively meandering story-telling. It likely doesn’t help that you can see the eventual destination coming, from a very long way off.

The budget here was reportedly $15,000, and it shows. This is especially true in the department which is the bête noire of low-budget film-making, audio. It’s echoey in one scene, muffled in the next, and the incidental music score often cuts abruptly at the join, making the transitions more abrupt instead of smooth.  It’s some credit that Harthcock’s performance manages to overcome these problems, at least to some degree, and the perky Delilah is generally the best thing the film has to offer [the sole time I laughed, as mentioned above, was when she spat out a taunt, along the lines of “Why aren’t you married yet? Wasn’t your brother available?”]

However, it’s a performance which sticks out like a sore thumb when put beside the rest of the cast, with Tandy in particular so understated, he should be checked for a pulse. The vast bulk of the attempts at comedy fall painfully flat, the romance between the two leads is sadly lacking in chemistry, and the efforts at portraying the boxing and Delilah’s training are 95% unsuccessful. There are any number of potentially interesting directions this could have gone: instead, the script sticks to a painfully well-travelled path, and ends up going down for the count.

Dir: Sean Riley
Star: Jessica Harthcock, Noah Cook, Ryan Czerwonko, Donnie Pierre

Female Fight Squad

  By

★★½
“Clubbed to death.”

This was originally known as Female Fight Club. I presume the title was changed after a strongly-worded letter from David Fincher’s lawyers, perhaps to evoke thoughts of its star’s stunt work on Suicide Squad. It’s interesting, because Amy Johnston’s previous feature, Lady Bloodfight also underwent a similar title change before release. Unfortunately, this isn’t as good. It reminds me a bit of the films Zoë Bell appeared in, early on in her career. She was usually the best thing in them, but they still weren’t up to much, because Bell was still finding her feet as an actress. Similarly here, there’s no denying Johnston’s talents in motion, yet this does not offer a good setting in which they can be appreciated.

For where Bloodfight played to her strength and packed in wall-to-wall action, here she’s required to do the dramatic lifting here and… Well, let’s just say, when you’re out-acted by Dolph Lundgren, it’s never a good thing.  The story is no better than boilerplate nonsense as well. Rebecca (Johnston) is a former fighter who now works in an animal shelter, because cute puppies. She is forced out of retirement to help her sister, Kate (Palm), who is a hundred grand in debt to some very nasty people. They are led by the creepy Landon Jones (Goyos) and his well-stocked freezer, which is used not solely to store his chosen variety of ice-cream. And he just happens to run an underground all-women fight ring, which Rebecca can enter. What are the odds? Meanwhile, the sisters’ father (Lundgren) is in prison, serving time for a crime he may or may not have committed, and has his own issues to deal with there.

Cue the rolling of eyes. It all rumbles along, from one cliché to the next, and if you’ve seen as many straight-to-video action flicks of the past couple of decades as I have, you’ll understand why this one largely failed to register. The only saving grace are the fights, which are well-enough staged. Johnston clearly knows her stuff, and there is good support from other women with a similar background, such as Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez, playing Landon’s top fighter, known as “Claire the Bull”.  The problem is, there just aren’t enough of these scenes, and the film escalates, inexplicably, to a fight between Rebecca and Landon. The latter was never established as any kind of bad-ass previously, so this makes little or no sense.

I’m still excited to see where Johnston goes from things like this. Right now, she has some room for improvement, both on the acting side and in her choice of projects. But both of these are areas where more experience should naturally lead to positive development. That’s exactly what happened with regard to Bell, who has worked her way up to become of the more reliable action actresses. I get the feeling Johnston has much the same potential, and there’s certainly room for them both in the field.

Dir: Miguel A. Ferrer
Star: Amy Johnston, Cortney Palm, Rey Goyos, Dolph Lundgren

Fight Valley

  By

★★
“Ring around the poses.”

The results of bringing female MMA fighters to the screen have been a bit mixed, shall we say. Gina Carano has looked decent in her films, but Ronda Rousey’s performances have been roundly criticized, and her Mile 22 project appears dead in the water. The performance by the recently retired from MMA Miesha Tate, which is likely the film’s major selling-point, rates… somewhere in the middle. She doesn’t disgrace herself – but that may be partly because there is no shortage of other weaknesses to criticize here. Tate is convincing in her role – yet since she’s playing a mixed martial-artist, it’s hardly proof of any acting ability. But I guess, everyone has to start somewhere, and a thinly-disguised version of yourself is a good place to begin.

The film’s heroine, though, is Windsor (Celek), part of a separated family. She lives with her mother in a well-to-do part of New Jersey; her sister, Tory, lives with Dad in a far more dangerous neck of the woods, and is persistently getting into street brawls. Tory asks Windsor for money and is spurned, only to turn up beaten to death later. Windsor goes slumming to investigate, with the help of Tory’s lesbian lover, Duke (O’Brien), and discovers her late sister was involved in underground fights. In the time-honoured trope of B-grade martial-arts films, Windsor decides to strap on the gloves so she can find and take revenge on Tory’s killer, convincing the reluctant Jabs (and this character is where Tate comes in) to train her for this purpose.

According to the IMDb, the budget here was twenty-seven million dollars. If true, I have no clue quite where that went, because this is absolutely the kind of film that could be churned out for a a million and change. It’s not like there are any name stars here, unless you count the bevy of UFC people who show up in minor roles: as well as Tate, the film also includes Cris Cyborg, Holly Holm and Cindy Dandois, among others. Though despite the poster shown, the non-Tate roles are barely cameos. Certainly, the script consists of little more than a selection of random clichés, as it lumbers towards a conclusion you would have to be legally blind not to see approaching. Hawk’s background in music videos is painfully apparent, and O’Brien is the only person here who comes out with much real credit, playing Duke in a way that is credible and, hence, surprisingly scary. She isn’t someone whose drink you’d want to spill in a bar, put it that way.

What sinks the movie is Celek, who is woeful: thoroughly unconvincing at every step of her implausible journey from Disney princess to hard-as-nails brawler, supposedly capable of going toe-to-toe with Cyborg. If they’d kept the film on the streets, since it does a semi-decent job of capturing a world where everyone operates on a hair-trigger, and had Duke trying to revenge her lover’s death, this might have had a chance of being more than the thoroughly forgettable project, deserving little more than a quick, straight-to-video death.

Dir: Rob Hawk
Star: Susie Celek, Erin O’Brien, Miesha Tate, Cabrina Collesides

Mary Kom

  By

★★★
“Firsts of fury…”

marykomThis was far from our first traditionally “Bollywood” film, but was the first such with what could be described as an action heroine. Traditionally, the women in Bollywood films are relegated to love interests for the square-jawed heroes. Not that this necessarily makes for a bad film [far from it, some are enormously entertaining], just that they don’t fall within the remit of our coverage here. This one squarely does, although also succumbs to many of the clichés of plucky underdog sports stories, shamelessly manipulating what was already an impressive story, purely to tug on the cinematic heart-strings.

The heroine is Mangte Chungeijang Kom (Chopra), the tomboyish daughter of a poor rice-farmer (Das), whose quick temper has got her into trouble more than once. Her parents try to deflect this energy into sports, but when she stumbles into a gym run by the stern coach Narjit Singh (Thapa), she realizes that’s her true calling, and begins training there with the knowledge of her mother, but not her father. When he finds out, he gives Mary an ultimatum: boxing or her family. Guess how that goes. She becomes world champion in her weight class, but then gives up the sport for marriage and to start a family. However, unable to settle down, her husband (Kumaar) convinces Mary to make a comeback, something rarely seen after becoming a mother. She’ll face obstacles, not just from her opponents, but also from her own body, the sport’s administrators and the distraction of a child’s health issues.

Wisely, Kumar avoids the traditional staged musical numbers, instead incorporating the songs which are almost de rigeur for Bollywood, into things such as multiple training montages. Some are more effective than others, and as noted, it does tend to fall into the trap of shallow stereotypes too often. I’m not sure about Chopra, who certainly is nowhere near as well-muscled as the poster would have you believe, and the fights themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. However, Chopra’s acting talents are certainly up to the task, and if the final reel is factually dubious, Kumar throws everything but the kitchen sink into its depiction and, much like Mary herself, pulls off an unlikely victory – albeit by a split decision on points. With a central character that’s not only a woman, but one from an area of India barely regarded as part of the country, credit is certainly due for pushing the boundaries of popular Indian cinema. It’s just a shame there was no such sense of adventure with the well-worn storyline.

Dir: Omung Kumar
Star: Priyanka Chopra, Darshan Kumaar, Sunil Thapa, Robin Das

Girl’s Blood

  By

★★★
“All over the bloody place.”

girls blood2I’m very confused, at to who is the target audience here. It’s part earnest drama about serious social issues, including gender identity and spousal abuse. But it also depicts a hardcore underground fight-club, “Girl’s Blood” in which women battle it out for the gratification of spectators. However, don’t expect a Japanese version of Raze, for while the fights are well-staged [Sakamoto has a good track record, most recently having done 009-1: The End of the Beginning], it has all the class of WWE’s Divas division and amateur night at your local strip-club, combined. For it panders shamelessly to every sexist stereotype imaginable, from sexy nurse through sexy schoolgirl to sexy idol singer. And don’t even get me started on the mud wrestling, filmed with such prurient camerawork, I was genuinely embarrassed for the participants. Then there’s copious and lengthy lesbian sex scenes, which appear to have strayed in from another genre altogether, albeit filmed with a good deal more style and bigger budgets than usual for such fare.

The central character is Satsuki (Haga), the club’s best fighter, but who is estranged from her family and refuses to change with the other girls. Her position as top dog is challenged by the arrival of Chinatsu (Tada), well-versed in MMA techniques. After the two have become close, personal friends, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, it turns out that she’s working without the knowledge of her abusive husband (Hideo) , a karate master who is unimpressed by the unsanctioned nature of these bouts. He abducts Chinatsu and brainwashes her back into submission; worse, still, he threatens to have Girl’s Blood closed down. There’s only one way to settle things: that old chestnut of a school-vs-school battle, in which his top three students will face off against Satsuki two of her colleagues: if they win, Girl’s Blood becomes official, but if they lose, they will have to disband forever [because, apparently, this is how sanctioning martial-arts works in Japan]. You will be unsurprised to hear this contest all comes down to the final match, which sees Satsuki facing off against Chinatsu.

I watched the Director’s Cut version which runs 128 minutes, and wonder if this is perhaps part of the problem; maybe the regular edition has a better consistency of tone or genre. Personally, I dug the action (and, fortunately, there’s no shortage), was disinterested in the drama, and gave severe consideration to fast-forwarding through the soft-core porn, while giving thanks under my breath that my wife was out. Not that she minds: however, the stream of sarcastic comments which would surely have resulted, might well have sunk what chance the film had of any serious evaluation. I’d be hard-pushed to argue with her in this case. While this could truly be described as a film with something for everyone, there are equally significant elements which will be of no interest – or even actively off-putting – for just about anybody. If the creators had made their minds up what they wanted this to be, the end result would likely have been stronger.

Dir: Koichi Sakamoto
Star: Yuria Haga, Asami Tada, Ayame Misaki, Sakaki Hideo
a.k.a. Aka X Pinku

 

Maisie Undercover: Shadow Boxer

  By

★
“Sucker punched”

maisieThis review is more in the nature of a warning than a critique, since it would be easy for someone to look at the cover (right) and think that this might be a movie about – oh, I dunno, boxing? It seems a reasonable expectation, given the following synopsis:

After her partner is mercilessly gunned down, sexy, streetwise cop Maisie turns in her badge and turns to the relative safety behind the bar of a hip new joint she names Dames. It doesn’t compare to the rush of danger she gets on the streets but it keeps her out of trouble – until trouble finds her in the form of a guy, a dead girlfriend and a probable Mob connection. Now that familiar adrenaline is pumping again as she goes deep undercover with the hot and hardened women who make up the volatile world of female boxing. Will Maisie solve the murder before someone else is “knocked out?”

While none of the above is technically a lie, I should probably have done a little due diligence, and perhaps noticed that the first word on the cover is “Sexy.” For this is actually soft-core porn, with the plot little more than a thin excuse to link together the sex scenes, which take place with such regularity you could set your watch by them. And you’ll certainly be checking your watch with a high degree of frequency. Not that I’m averse to pornography by definition – indeed, not too far down the line, I’ll be writing about a hard-core version of Nikita – but it’s all about expectations. I watched this one on a chilly Tuesday morning, fortunately when Chris was out of the house; however, I still had a somewhat tricky conversation with my son. “Isn’t 9:30am a bit early for porn?” he said sardonically. Why, yes. Yes, it is. Though I’m pleased at least to see he does appear to have picked up my tendency for ironic commentary during his college years.

I supposed I should briefly mention the film, which could have been interesting. White even has some potential, as former cop turned private eye Maisie Calloway [a character she played in two other films the same year, which I will not be rushing to see]. She has a bumpy past, separated from her cop husband, and whose partner was, as the synopsis says, killed – apparently in a previous movie, because it plays no significant part here. Indeed, the storyline is far more of an afterthought, treated as if its of no real concern. I suppose that’s fair enough, but if you’re going to make soft porn, you should at least have the honesty to promote and sell it as soft porn, and not pretend it’s something which the film most definitely isn’t.

Dir: J.W. McHausen
Star: Charlie White, Joey Ray, Nick Manning, Nicole Oring
a.k.a. Twisted Temptations