Brawler (2011)

 

Brawler (2011)- *1\2

Directed by: Chris Sivertson

Starring: Nathan Grubbs, Marc Senter, Dane Rhodes, Pell James, and Michael Bowen 

Charlie Fontaine (Grubbs) and Bobby Fontaine (Senter) are brothers who, in their spare time, enter into Punchfighting matches on New Orleans riverboats. The mob is involved in the form of Atwater (Rhodes), but Charlie has a high-quality trainer in the form of Rex Baker (Bowen). When Charlie catches Bobby engaging in "the ultimate betrayal" (to quote the back of the DVD box) with his wife Kat (James), it's clear that the only way to resolve this dispute is in the Punchfighting ring. So, eventually, the two brothers square off against each other. Who will be the ultimate BRAWLER?


Hey, look! It's another Punchfighter! Beloved reader, you can rest assured that as long as they keep making movies with shirtless men punching each other, we here at Comeuppance reviews will continue to watch them and review them. Curiously, filmmakers out there don't seem to realize that this sort of thing has been done before. A lot.


Brawler was writer/director Chris Sivertson's follow-up to his I Know Who Killed Me (2007), the Lindsay Lohan epic that seems to have been much maligned but is actually fairly entertaining. In that film, there are many, many stupid moments but they somehow add to the overall watchability factor. In Brawler, just the stupid remains. He seems to be going for drama and atmosphere over anything else - and that includes scenes of fighting. There are surprisingly few brawls in Brawler.


In I Know Who Killed Me, there are many colorful lighting schemes and some flashy editing to keep the viewer's eye glued to the screen. In Brawler, they forgot to turn on the lights at all. Yes, it's one of those. There are many scenes with low - or seemingly no - lights. Filmmakers should know that not turning on the lights doesn't help the viewer like your movie. It actually annoys us.


There are long sections with no fighting, and the movie takes itself way too seriously. Even with all the endless dialogue scenes, somehow the writers of Brawler forgot to include an antagonist. Something every story should have, especially a Punchfighter. There's no Brakus, Tong Po, or some such memorable villain that our heroes must face off against and work up towards.


The character of Bobby is very Zac Efron-like. In other words, a prissy millennial. He doesn't seem like your typical tough guy. The best character in the movie was Rex, played by Michael Bowen. Much like Sly Stallone in his TV show The Contender, he's a fight trainer who wears a fedora. Considering Brawler's limited resources, their best move would have been to increase the role of Rex if they wanted to improve things. 

What would have been even better is if they had gotten one more character actor in there, perhaps someone for Bowen to play off of - someone like Lou Ferrigno, Christopher Lambert, Nick Mancuso, Vincent Spano - anybody! But no, it's just a bunch of fumbling around in the dark. Literally.


There's a scene early on where a group of frat bros comes to assault Bobby and he has to beat them all up. This shouldn't have been one scene - it should have been the basis for the plot. Brawler should have been: An evil fighter (the Brakus character) commands an army of frat bros. He has a secret lair and the bros do his bidding, whatever that may be. The baddie wants to take over the town so he sends the bros to trash businesses and cause mayhem. 

The Fontaine brothers must fight through wave after wave of frat bros with backwards or sideways baseball caps until they make it to the final battle - the toughest battle of their lives - with the evil baddie. Now is that so freakin' hard? Rather than tease us with that one scene, that's what Brawler should have been in its entirety.


Probably the best example of a fight film that's more of a drama is Scorpion (2007). Probably the weakest is The Fight (2001). Brawler leans more to the latter. Thank the lord it's only 84 minutes. You can find it at your local Dollar Tree or other dollar store, as we did, but the real question is, would you want to?

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Sniper: Reloaded (2011)

Sniper: Reloaded (2011)- * *

Directed by: Claudio Fah

Starring: Chad Michael Collins, Annabel Wright and Billy Zane

Brandon Beckett (Collins) is legendary sniper Thomas Beckett’s son. His latest military assignment is to go to the Congo in Africa with his platoon, train the locals in the ways of war, and provide help to a farmer who is caught in the crossfire of a local civil war. While in the midst of their service, a sniper opens fire upon them, many people are killed, and Beckett just barely makes it out alive. While he desperately wants revenge, he first has to learn the ways of sniping from Richard Miller (Zane), which Beckett is initially against doing. Meanwhile, he finds time for romance with Lt. Ellen Abramowitz (Wright). He is later interrogated by her and her compatriot about the mission, but there may be one last off-the-books assignment Beckett has to undertake in the ongoing battle against red tape…

The Sniper series returns after Sniper 3 (2004), and following this seven-year break, it is indeed “reloaded” for the modern-day DTV generation. That’s exemplified by first-person-shooter-style shots on the guns that make it seem like they attached a Go Pro camera to them. Call us old fashioned, but we miss the 90’s style “bullet time” effects employed in the golden age. To be fair, something like that is also attempted here. We won’t use the term (as we have many times before) Africa Slog to describe this movie, but it teeters dangerously close at times. The main reason for that is that we, as the audience, don’t know who the villain even is until the movie is almost over. The baddie should have been more clearly defined – or defined at all -throughout the bulk of the film. It doesn’t help that new Beckett Chad Michael Collins is a bland, featureless hero that the audience never really warms to.

Of course, there’s plenty of shooting on display, and a lot of military jargon is thrown around. There seems to have been an attempt to make things quite serious-minded and the result is that there are many more dour moments than there should be. The level of audience engagement goes up and down but mostly stays down. The female lead was firmly in the Sienna Miller/Naomi Watts/Nicole Kidman camp, and why she would be interested in the charmless lunkhead that is Beckett remains unexplained. 

Of course, we were on Billy Zane watch. Just like we are in our everyday lives. He doesn’t show up until 40 minutes into the movie, but when he finally does arrive, things perk up a bit. There’s no question that he enlivens the proceedings. We’re not entirely down on this movie – as we said, things fluctuate between the duller moments and some genuinely cool scenes. We won’t spoil them for you, but they’re certainly there. Somewhat ironically for a Sniper movie, things are hit or miss.

One of our favorite moments came not during the more violent episodes, but when Beckett shows his sensitive side. During his mission, he rescues a young girl who looks to be about 12 or 13. He generously buys her some Jonas Brothers and Michael Jackson DVDs, but she despairingly sighs that she can’t play them because they’re Region 5. This scene stood out to us because it showed some interesting humanity and presented a situation we can all relate to. This almost throwaway moment showed that the filmmakers were capable of something more. Maybe in the endless series of sequels, we’ll see if that’s the direction they prefer to go. I have to say, we have our doubts…

Featuring the song “Tear It Up” by a band called White Demons (which only appears during the end credits but should have been in the movie itself to provide some energy), Sniper: Reloaded is something of a mixed bag but seems to err on the more run-of-the-mill side of things.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Bounty Hunters (2011)

Bounty Hunters (2011)- *1\2

Directed by: Patrick McBrearty

Starring: Trish Stratus, Frank J. Zupancic, Boomer Phillips, Andrea James Lui and Joseph Rafla









Ridley (Zupancic), Chase (Phillips), and Jules (Stratus) are a team of Toronto-based bounty hunters. Bounty Huntering apparently isn’t paying the bills enough for Jules, who has a young daughter, so she has a side job as a strip club waitress part-time. A potential opportunity arises for our trio of ‘tracers when, after picking up a bad guy for a $100,000 bounty, mob boss Hal Lambino (Rafla) intervenes and offers them a million dollars if they turn the guy over to him, so he won’t spill the beans in court. Wary of this criminal proposition, the Bounty Hunters refuse, and now they have to fight off many baddies in the Canadian underworld. 

This includes some disgruntled Asian massage parlor ladies, including one especially tough chick, Ruby (Lui), who has a knock-down, drag-out fight with Jules. Will justice prevail in the great white north? Will the maple leaf of freedom fly proudly once again? Will it be, as she has so often claimed, Stratusfaction guaranteed?....Ya HOSER!

While it shouldn’t be confused with the Michael Dudikoff outings Bounty Hunters (1996) and Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball (1997), THIS Bounty Hunters does share the silly, humorous, tongue-in-cheek vibe of those 90’s offerings. For those keeping track, there’s also the Robert Ginty vehicle Bounty Hunter (1990) and of course the Lorenzo Lamas/Matthias Hues team-up Bounty Tracker (1993). Seeing as how this movie is called Bail Enforcers in Canada, and there are so many other similarly-titled movies in the U.S., why change it at all? Is “Bail Enforcers” SO different from “Bounty Hunters”? Enough to make any kind of difference? Besides, this movie is so Canadian, we’re surprised it wasn’t originally called “Boonty Hunters, Eh?” - we kid our neighbors to the north, but at least they’re not trying to hide the fact that they’re Canadian, like so many others. These filmmakers are true patriots, letting the Canadianness of their movie really shine through, like maple syrup in the sun.

But, straight to the point, if there was no Trish Stratus, there’d be no movie. She brightens most of the scenes she’s in, but at one point in the movie she “goes to the hospital” (was she doing WWE stuff at the same time?) and isn’t seen for a while, and the movie suffers terribly. Bounty Hunters gets off to a great start, but at the 35 minute mark it loses steam and doesn’t recover. The Tony Soprano-like Lambino character goes off on this long monologue and it puts the brakes on the movie. THAT’s when we sink down and realize, hey, this whole thing is low-budget, junky, and cheap-feeling. 

The dialogue goes from ridiculous to ridiculously stupid, and it all goes from “entertaining” to “meh....” What the filmmakers absolutely should have done is kept their foot on the gas, and kept the absurd situations coming fast and furious, not seemingly change the vibe.

At 79 minutes, you think you can’t lose, but as we always say, beware the short movies. They’re that way for a reason - because they FEEL much longer. Even the Trish Stratus fight scenes start to become repetitive and boring after a while, and those are the movie highlights! If a 79 minute movie has FILLER, beware. 

It tries to be sordid, with scenes in strip clubs and “massage parlors”, but Canada is so clean it never comes off as gritty. The Bail Enforcement Agents have jackets that say “BEA” on the back (is this a real thing in Canada or made up for the movie?) which seem like a little old lady’s personal protection force. Or Bea Arthur is really running the show. She should have done action movies. She could've have been the Trish Stratus of her day.

The first third or so of Bounty Hunters is stupidly, reasonably entertaining, but then falls off fast. Only fans with their heads in the StratusPhere are likely to truly appreciate the wanton silliness herein.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, Cool Target!

Forced To Fight (2011)

Forced To Fight (2011)- * *1\2

Directed by: Jonas Quastel

Starring: Gary Daniels, Arkie Reece, Corbin Thomas, Alexandra Weaver, and Peter Weller













Shane Slavin (Daniels) is a former Punchfighter but now shuns violence and works as a humble auto mechanic. When his brother Scotty (Reece) follows in his footsteps and begins underground fighting for ruthless fight promoter Danny G (Weller), he makes a terrible mistake. He begins borrowing against his fight winnings, and soon he owes Mr. G 64,000 dollars. But he can’t earn it back because G’s goons give him a severe beating. When G approaches Shane about earning the money in lieu of his brother in a “comeback” role, Shane of course says no.

Seeing no other way to earn the money, he’s then “Forced To Fight”. The only problem is, the fight game has become even more brutal since Shane left, and, to compete with younger, stronger fighters, Shane has to train and train to remain in the game. But it begins to negatively affect his personality, and he becomes a jerk to his wife Connie (Weaver) and his son  James (Thomas). What with Danny G forcing him to take dives, and even kidnapping his wife and son, the stakes have never been higher for Shane Slavin. But is he truly forced to fight...or does he enjoy it and now he’s  fighting for his honor and pride? Find out today...

It was great to see an older, wiser Gary Daniels. Especially when he can Punchfight with the best of them. But you also care about his character Shane, who goes from a nonviolent mechanic to the guy who gets “in too deep” and his whole demeanor becomes darker. Whether intentional or not, the theme of the film seems to be that the older fighters have more heart. The younger guys might have flashier moves, more bulk, and stupider tattoos, but Shane Slavin refuses to fight dirty and initially is resistant even to MMA-style floor grappling, insisting he’s a “stand-up” fighter (in more ways than one). Peter Weller then makes a hilarious remark about how it looks gay anyway.

While it is, frankly, amazing that in 2011 Punchfighters of this type are still being made, and we are happy about that, it does kind of make you long for the old days. Probably much like Shane Slavin. Look at a movie like Shootfighter (1992), where fighters had colorful, individual personalities and fighting styles like Boa and Mongoose. Compare that with today where we have a bunch of heartless, soulless, characterless, humorless, merciless thugs as fighters. Screaming fans in the audience no longer hold cash in their hands. Now it’s all done on a computer, and rather than clutching their cash, they now clutch their iPhones. Sure, Punchfighters are still being made, but at what cost? 

The presence of Gary Daniels not only keeps the movie afloat, it highlights and underlines this change of the world to a harsher, less fun reality.

If you watch a lot of Punchfighters (and we assume you do if you’re reading this site) then plotwise, Forced to Fight is nothing you haven’t seen before. It has every single cliche (not meant in a negative way) these movies tend to have. It would be pointless to list them all, because the movie itself is one big cliche. 

But movies like this are made for fans who want to see them - hence you can actually SEE the fights and there, mercifully, isn’t a reliance on quick cuts and nu-metal. That’s absolutely to the movie’s credit, but you may get “punch fatigue” towards the end if your tolerance for shirtless, hulking men in small shorts wailing on each other isn’t super high (i.e. if you are a normal human being).

Fortunately, Forced to Fight is, if nothing else, evidence that our beloved Gary Daniels has still got it. That alone makes the movie worth seeing, and the presence of Peter Weller only sweetens the deal. But if some of the things we mentioned earlier turn you off, thanks to the predictability of it all, at least you’ll know what to expect going in.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Also check out write-ups from our buddies, Cool Target and DTVC!

Arena (2011)

 Arena (2011)- *1\2

Directed by: Jonah Loop

Starring: Kellan Lutz, Samuel L. Jackson, Katia Winter, Daniel Dae Kim, Johnny Messner, Nina Dobrev, and James Remar













A mysterious, underground fight promoter known only as Logan (Jackson) stages "Deathgames" in which combatants fight to the death. These bloody mano-a-mano brawls are broadcast over the internet and apparently everyone from office workers in Hong Kong to unlikable and annoying frat boys in America find Logan's product wildly appealing. When one of Logan's workers named Milla (Winter) kidnaps ex-Marine and current paramedic David Lord (Lutz) and forces him to fight for his freedom, at first Lord resists. 

But then Logan offers the deal that if Lord wins ten deathfights to the death, he can go, and not die. Meanwhile, he's kept in a cell far from the prying eyes of the outside world. It's there he befriends Taiga (Dae Kim), who is in a similar situation as him, but his final match will be against an executioner-type-guy known as Kaden (Messner). Will David Lord be the Lord of the underground internet deathfight circuit?

Arena starts off on a bad foot right from the get-go and never recovers. It's almost like an athlete who's so pumped up that he got the ball, he fumbles immediately, and feels so much pressure to recover and make up time, he sabotages himself and can never really keep up. Right in the first few minutes, we're subjected to CGI-based fights, super-irritating frat characters that we only see from one angle as they watch their precious deathfights, and we discover, to our dismay, that our main hero, the guy we're all supposed to get behind, is a man named Kellan Lutz. 

Or possibly Kip Pardue, we're not really sure. Be it Kip, Kellan or Kaden, whatever, you know how it's said that couples that have been together a long time start to resemble each other, or in longtime human-pet relationships, the two start to look alike? Well, it's pretty clear Mr. Lutz has been admiring the Ryan Phillippe poster over his bed for a bit too long. If there's anyone out there who has seen every Ryan Phillippe movie ever made, it's him. While modeling your acting style and career on Ryan Phillippe might not be the world's best decision, if his goal was to be indistinguishable from him, he achieved it.

The massive vacuum where a scintilla of originality might have lived is one of the more glaring problems here. This is just another stupid, mindless fighting movie that adds nothing to an already-crowded marketplace. It's filled with cliche-ridden dialogue and plot developments. 

Its lack of originality is even evident in its title. There are already multiple movies that exist called Arena, but apparently that didn't bother anyone involved. It's almost like they were trying to telegraph this movie's superfluity to any potential renters. (God forbid there be buyers). Okay, we don't expect total originality here, or anywhere, really, but honestly. The only dialogue we liked was the fact that the name "David Lord" was said like a thousand times throughout the course of the movie. It became funny, in a Malone or Brakus kind of way. If that's the name you're super-proud of, and not much else, there's a problem.

OK, we know what you're thinking, because we were thinking it too: why in God's name is Samuel L. Jackson in this piece of crud? The only answer we can come up with is that he's a professional actor, and he likes to work. In Arena, he's a Black guy with a large underground command center, just like Keith David in Executive Target (1997). But this movie is just a knockoff of Gamer (2009) and Fatal Combat (1995) in just about every respect, so as noted previously, originality was clearly one of the first things on the executioner's chopping block. 

Speaking of which, Kaden as the executioner character, rather than be intimidating, is far more reminiscent of early-2000's game show character The Quizmaster from the show Inquisition. You think at any moment he's going to ask David Lord to recite the names of the Great Lakes.

 So we covered the childish, derivative dialogue and plot (a character even says "finish him" at one point, clearly ripping off Mortal Kombat), but the movie never explains why they put so much time and effort into getting this random guy, David Lord, to fight. Then they put him in a cell with a bunch of annoying lights and sounds, meant to break down his spirit. It ended up having the same effect on the audience. Then the brainless frat boys use their iPads and iPhones to bet on the fights. And did we mention Kellan is shirtless for about 90% of the movie? 

But we always try to see the positive, so on that score we applaud the fact that you can actually see most of the fights and there aren't a ton of eye-singing quick-cuts. But on the whole this movie is lame. It would have helped if they got someone good to be the hero, like a Dolph, Scott Adkins or Gary Daniels, but even if they touched Arena with a ten foot fighting pole, it would still be what it essentially is, sadly enough.

The important thing to remember is that Kellan Lutz is not, we repeat, not Ryan Phillippe. Aside from that, Arena embodies almost everything that's bad about modern-day DTV "action" movies.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Assassination Games (2011)

Assassination Games (2011)-* *

AKA: Weapon

Directed by: Ernie Barbarash 

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme and Scott Adkins





"If I don't feel, am I really alive?"






Vincent Brazil (Van Damme) is a rather stoic hitman. Roland Flint (Adkins) is also a hitman. Both men have as their latest target one Polo (Kaye), a ruthless murderer, torturer and drug runner. Naturally, at first Flint and Roland don’t get along, but they come together because of their common goal of killing Polo. Both have different reasons for wanting this: Brazil’s is pure business, but Flint has much more personal motivations. Who will win the ASSASSINATION GAMES?

We really, really wanted to like this movie. We gave it a ton of slack. We had high hopes. But the simple fact is, unfortunately, Assassination Games just isn’t that great. It’s not offensively BAD per se, but it’s so unbelievably cliched, and is so predictable, and without so much as a wink to the audience, it grates on the viewer. If there isn’t one speck of originality, and there are cliches in EVERY scene, and it’s totally paint by numbers, that’s one thing. But the movie takes itself so seriously, you have to wonder if the filmmakers knew just how hugely cliched it was, or if they actually thought it was original. In fact, in one scene alone, they manage to fit in three classic cliches: “He’s the best”, “No loose ends”, and “No more mistakes”. I would say they were doing it to save time, but this movie is overlong, so it can’t be that.

To be fair, there are some cool moments, which include the “Auto-gun” thingy (not to be confused with the President’s Auto-pen, who I’m told is mounting an election bid in 2012), and Scott Adkins gives an admirably non-phoned-in performance, but the movie has that modern, washed-out, green look that so many movies have had in the 2000’s. That in itself is an irritating cliche, as if normal film doesn’t exist. And when it’s announced on screen in the beginning of the movie, “Bucharest, Romania”, we thought, “do they even have to say this any more?” Isn’t it just kind of assumed at this point?

Plus there are some stupid CGI gun muzzle flashes, as if THEY didn’t exist prior to 2011. Is it really easier to do it that way? Do they think audiences like seeing Playstation 1-style graphics horribly mutilated into a piece of film? Why is that somehow BETTER? Can anyone answer this?

What’s funny is Van Damme is so Damme wooden in this movie, he makes Don "The Dragon" Wilson look like Klaus Kinski. But Van Damme was a producer on this film, and usually in his co-produced movies he cares, so it can’t be a matter of not caring, it’s just a hilarious choice of woodenness. The power team of Adkins and Van Damme is out in force once again after the far superior The Shepherd (2008), and if you have to see one Van Damme/Adkins team-up, that would be the one. Interestingly, in The Shepherd, Van Damme has a pet bunny, and in Assassination Games, he has a pet turtle. Moving on...

I’m surprised it took us to this point in the review to mention this, as it’s pretty important, as well as evident, but this movie is pretty much a carbon copy of The Mechanic (2011) with Statham. We can’t list all the similarities here for space reasons, but let’s just say, if you do a double feature, watch the Mechanic first. You may get a feeling of Deja Van Vu...

As much as we wish it could go in the Van Damme win pile, sadly it cannot. Adkins tries hard to rescue the sinking ship, but he can’t. Only Van Damme or Adkins fans should play this Game.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett