I’m starting to think the underground fighting movie is to modern DTV what the western was to b-movies in the ’50s. They just never stop coming and yet somehow they’re not all terrible, in fact a few of them are great. You got BLOOD AND BONE of course, you got UNDISPUTED II-III (unless you consider prison fighting a separate genre), DAMAGE with Stone Cold Steve Austin was surprisingly good, and there’s even a good theatrically released one, FIGHTING. I’d recommend all of those above PIT FIGHTER, but I’ll be damned, here’s another pretty enjoyable and distinctively different take on this same type of storyline. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Jesse V. Johnson’
Pit Fighter
Friday, September 17th, 2010
The Butcher
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
There are plenty of things wrong with the 2009 DTV crime movie THE BUTCHER. It’s made entirely of cliches. The filmatism is sometimes awkward and crude. It’s longer and more repetitive than necessary. There’s not much of a sense of danger, because the hero keeps getting in shootouts where all he does is hit everybody while they miss him. He keeps leaving his girl in the car, defenseless, and nobody ever notices her. And the things that are bad aren’t funny-bad.
So this is DTV through and through, but the things I liked about it won the fight with the things I didn’t. And the main thing I liked was Eric Roberts. (more…)
