CommentsXp Best movie ever!

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

rowmorg This film is so superior, and yet apparently (according to IMDb) it made no money at all! The irritatingly named Chiwetel Ejiofor is a gifted British actor who embodies the heroic theme of this film: holding on to your ethics in the midst of massive corruption. Writer/director David Mamet has described corruption many times, and his bad guys always have the language, but Mike Terry (Ejiofor) has ideals, and reveres the Japanese "Professor" who holds the unique Red Belt. It's fascinatingly familiar to see Terry's world collapsing around his ears, and his debts mounting over his head. His jiu-jitsu craft comes into action when he teaches Emily Mortimer's rape-victim character to defend herself, and she provides the stimulus (in a cracking slap round the face) for him to turn round and confront his tormentors and challenge the whole MMR racket and its Gina Carano-type "star" fighters. It's a great climax, and neatly redirected when, instead of taking the mike and denouncing the event, he takes the red belt from the professor. End of picture: highly recommended.

Evan Matthew This atrocity plays like MAD MAGAZINE does martial arts, only with zero sense of humor. Maybe its artsy-fartsy pretentiousness would play better with subtitles, but in English it's a disaster from start to finish. I cannot understand how in the world it got made. Nor, in truth, can I understand how those involved in making it could come to work every day. Indeed I have trouble understanding how in hell I made it through the entire film. I guess the only possible explanation is total disbelief. The plot is preposterous, a character who seem brain dead at one moment prove to be star attorney when it's convenient, and the action is clubfooted at best. As for the dialogue, maybe it's time for Mamet to hang it up -- or at least to head back to the stage.

MUSCLEMAN First I have to apologize if I made mistakes as English is not my first language.When this movie came out, I refused to watch it. It just seemed like a retarded MMA exploitation movie, like never back down, made to make money from tapout t-shirts wearing teens. I had also heard that the concept of the film was that they were fighting with a handicap, like a hand attached behind the back etc. I mean, how dumb is that seriously.Yesterday, me and my 2 friends decided to watch the movie. To give you an idea, we all three have martial arts background. My two friends trained kickboxing and boxing for several years and I have myself been training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for 5-6 years. We are all film fans, from Haneke to Van Damme. What I mean is that we didn't hate the movie for it's lack of action or for being boring.I was not familiar with the director but i knew he was praised as a talented director and writer, so we gave the movie a chance.The plot is set around martial arts, BJJ and MMA in particular. The thing is, it's like the director did not do any research about the subject. It was SO RIDICULOUS to see the main character saying the cheesiest lines ever about his views on martial arts and life. All that samurai nonsense talk was SO over the top and dumb it was embarrassing. It really showed the director had absolutely no clue about the subject.The script was absolute garbage. Are we really supposed to believe that a gigantic conspiracy was setup, all of this within a few days, to actually steal what would appear to any normal human being as the dumbest idea ever; the concept that the fighter that picks the black rock or whatever has to fight with a handicap. Let me be clear to all of you with no martial art background; the guy with the handicap has the percentage of 0 chance to win the fight. I mean come on people. Of course, the conspiracy continues when the magician (who of course has a piercing in his eyebrow) is hired to fix the outcome of the fights! Are we really supposed to believe that the cop would kill himself for pretty much no reason! That Tim Allen (who is playing a big Hollywood tough guy actor for some reason) would give a 20 000$ watch to a stranger and than disappear when it is discovered that the watch has been stolen? Beyound stupid. and I'm not even going to mention the ending nonsense.I don't think Chiwetel Ejiofor is necessarily a bad actor, but he was just not the right guy to play the part. He doesn't look tough, particularly intelligent or charismatic.Finally, the fight scenes. They were so poorly executed it was embarrassing to watch. BJJ is not at all a flashy martial art as is let's say karate but still it was absolute garbage. The fight scenes were a mix of Steven Seagal stuff mixed with elementary school yard type wrestling.This movie had IMO absolutely 0 positive aspect. Even the hot girlfriend (way to hot for the hobo looking Chiwetel Ejiofor) turned out to be a backstabbing bitch! I just cannot understand how some of you might think this is remotely close to being a good film. It would have made sense if we would live in a fantasy world.

morphears Having read lots of reviews I decided on this film tonight over Bad Teacher, which by IMDb standards has a better rating....OMG, it's a laugh, it's a bit of fun but good god the dialogue if you have the subs on, well you'll realise the whole film has 50% at best, the rest is made up of repeats of the last sentence the character said, i'm not saying it is terrible, as I spent a couple of hours waiting to see what might happen next, but annoyingly I was left dissatified.... if you like old school eastern Jackie Chan or jet Li, you'll hate this, if you think a slightly updated Best of the Best (which I loved but now realise is a bit well....crap) then you'll give it a go and think....we'll it's not bad....but it ain't good peeps!!