Cool movie, but a little to cheesy and the fights were a little bit far fetched, but enjoyed it all the same!
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Cool movie, but a little to cheesy and the fights were a little bit far fetched, but enjoyed it all the same!
Watched it last night. It had some really great things and some not-so-great things. I thought Einstein was great; I wish they could have given his character a little more time to develop because he was the most interesting of the guys. Todd Duffee should stick to knocking guys out fast. He does that WAAAAAY better than... ...talking. The movie suffered from some of the same formulaic storyline stuff that almost all movies of the genre suffer from so just take the plotline stuff for what it is. The best part for me, frankly, was the jiu jitsu. The training montages were of the guys working legit techniques, not just pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks or some other crap that's at best only tangentially related to actual fighting. The fight sequences were polished, but the techniques were straight up and that made even the most "Hollywood" looking sequences more fun to watch. The reps Eddie put in as a strip club DJ back in the day paid off; he looked and sounded relaxed in the role. :) All in all I thought it was better than average for a movie of its genre, budget, promotion, etc. but it had its shortcomings as well.
Pretty enjoyable. I'd imagine it would be even better if I watched it after listening to a film major gush over Tarkovsky and Felini because this movie probably shits all over everything they stand for (i.e. the whole film as art thing).
NBD2 was so unapologetically bad, I had to respect it. Whoever directed this had serious ADHD. He couldn't get through the plot development fast enough, which was to be expected for a film that's about MMA. But even the fights were so fast-paced it felt like the director couldn't even hold his attention on that for more than 20 seconds at a time.
But my favorite bad part of all was Tod Duffee's unanswered question: "What are we doing here?" There was never anything close to a reason given. In fact, I remember the main character being asked point-blank, "Why are you fighting in this Beatdown thing?" and he makes some joke about wanting to rub up against sweaty men. He might as well have said, "Fuck you, NYU Film School."
I just watched this on FUSE network (cable TV). They played the 3rd movie in the series a couple weeks ago, which I enjoyed, so I was happy to catch this one, too, tonight.
I liked it. I laughed when I realized Eddie was the DJ. Once I noticed that, it became clear why the fight choreography was so BJJ-heavy.
Solid B movie.