This film was rubbish. But I don’t mind that, because it was supposed to be rubbish. If I go to see a film called Fighting I expect it to be rubbish, and frankly I’d be pissed off if it wasn’t rubbish. But as well as expecting it to be rubbish, I also expected it to, oh I don’t know, HAVE SOME FUCKING FIGHTING IN IT.

It’s not a complicated task, I’m not asking for Hitchcock suspense or Lucas special effects, all I want from a film called fighting is to see a bunch of people kicking each other in the shit, and this film manages to make a pig fisted fuckup of the whole endeavour. It’s a Film called Fighting, and it doesn’t have fighting in it, and that’s a big fucking problem if you ask me.

I’m not sure this is true, but I get the feeling that this film thought it could be something other than “Never Back Down Does New York” and made a deluded attempt to do something artistic or creative. It didn’t succeed. What it did succeed in doing was showing me a bunch of mumbling cunts who apparently weren’t given a script being unbearably boring and not punching each other in the fucking face.

The film starts with the main guy (I never bothered to learn his name) being in New York. He was totally in New York. Just in case we were in any doubt as to the amount that he was in New York, they showed us a fuck load of New York. This was something that happened constantly throughout the film, it happened with such alarming regularity that I started to suspect it was a bizarre mental torture of sorts. Like that water torture thing. If you’ve ever been held prisoner by government operatives, you’ll know what I mean.

So the scene is set, and I mean it’s really fucking set, and we watch Main Guy as he goes to the streets of New York and starts selling a fake Harry Potter book. Yeah, I thought it was stupid too, but don’t worry about it, there’s worse to come. He gets in an argument for no reason, and a fight breaks out. In this fight, he displays the amazing fighting prowess of punching someone then running away like a coward.

Apparently we had just learned that Main Guy is a fighting bad ass. It was completely half hearted and with even the tiniest bit of effort they could have done a much better job. I hate it when films don’t bother giving you evidence of a persons character. If he’s supposed to have such mad fighting skillz, they should have shown him ruining a load of people right in the fucking face. He did nothing other than slap a flabby Mexican and run away. This doesn’t demonstrate anything, I’ve run away from plenty of shit, and Dana White isn’t exactly knocking my door down to get me to join the UFC.

This opening scene reeked of laziness. They want you to believe the character is a great fighter, but they can’t be bothered to demonstrate it, so they just sort of ask you to believe it instead. If the people that made this film did Photofits for the Police they’d just draw stick men carrying a swag bag and fuck off home at lunch time. Lazy pricks.

So Main Guy then goes to buy some umbrellas from a deaf Chinese man for $100. This makes complete sense. Complete sense. Then I blinked, and in the time it took to do that the film progressed to the point that Main Guy was now living with one of the guys who he punched in the face like a coward earlier, and they had some sort of weird fighter/promoter/bestfriend thing going on. Given how much time this stupid film spent on boring mumbling conversations throughout its painful course, they could maybe have spent more than 30 seconds developing the relationship which was apparently central to the whole fucking movie. Again, lazy.

So anyway, Main Guy and Not Main Guy (couldn’t be bothered to learn his name either) are now BFFs for life and are proceeding to make a name for themselves in the underground Fighting scene. They do this by never ever fighting. Main Guy does a great job not fighting anyone at all and his name, whatever it was, gets around the underground [not]fighting scene. He fights one guy for 30 seconds and wins by fluke because they had the fight in a living room (of course) and the other guy smashed his head on a radiator while he was handing Main Guy his ass. Main Guy then ran away from the second fight he was supposed to have after narrowly avoiding getting the shit choked out of him only because one of his new BFF’s kicked the guy choking him in the back like a fucking pussy. And then, for no reason at all, he’s was suddenly a fighting superstar.

So that’s how it works is it? Fight one guy and get knocked about like a middle aged porn star, fight another one and cheat, still not win, run away like a coward, then become a big star. I don’t care how stupid a film is, it still has a responsibility to at least try and make sense within its own context. Armageddon was a great film. It was utterly ridiculous, but within the ridiculous framework it set itself, it made sense. This film didn’t do that, and that dooms any film to failure.

So, with his new superstar status, Main Guy has to have one big fight with someone great. Of course he does. That someone great has already been established as Main Guy’s nemesis. It’s something to do with his dad, and it’s always something to do with the dad. What is it with the daddy issues? I don’t know my dad, and I have never given even one tenth of a shit about that. These films act like every single man in the world spends their whole life caring about shit their parents did. Childhood is a shitty time, everyone just gets the fuck on with it and mans the fuck up. I had a Thundercats lunchbox when I was a kid which got broken by some clumsy dick teacher. I got over it, so should everyone else.

But anyway, enough about my much more interesting than this film childhood, let’s get back to the point. Main Guy fights his nemesis, beats his nemesis, and then I was allowed to go home, which was great. Other things happened before that, but nothing that was either interesting or violent, so I’m not going to bother talking about it. Suffice is to say, Main Guy fought his nemesis and then everyone had a million dollars which they won from some random scum bag who lived in a shithole, because there are loads of millionaires living in shitholes. Then they all go to Disney Land and get in no fights at all there.

This film is a lying prick. If you call a film fighting, you should have some fighting in it. It’s just polite.

Fuck this film.

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