FORCED TO FIGHT -- Blu-Ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 12/14/12

I haven't seen that many movies featuring kickboxing champion Gary Daniels of THE EXPENDABLES fame, but the ones I have seen (TEKKEN, HUNT TO KILL) were more exciting than FORCED TO FIGHT (2011).  And that's not really saying much.

Daniels plays family guy Shane, a former underground fighter who now owns his own auto shop.  When kid brother Scotty (Arkie Reece, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, JOHN CARTER) tries to flee the fight scene after ripping off ruthless crime boss Danny G. (Peter Weller, ROBOCOP, "Dexter"), he's beaten within an inch of his life.  Shane then finds that he must re-enter the world of underground mixed martial arts in order to pay back Scotty's massive debt to the evil gangster. 

But the fighting life not only causes Shane to revert back to his old, violent self--alienating his wife Connie (Alexandra Weaver) and sensitive son James--but also proves difficult to leave once it has its hooks in him.  As Shane's fights gain massive pay-per-view hits on the internet, Danny G. has no intention of letting him go until he's used him up, even if it means threatening Shane's family so that he'll be...forced to fight.

With a visual style that only occasionally has its moments and a wavering hand-held camera that gets a little old after awhile, director Jonas Quastel and his co-writers have assembled a simple and very familiar plot out of parts we've seen several times before.  Shane's agreement to fight again leads right into the usual training montage, which gives way to the standard fighting-his-way-back-to-the-top montage, which is interspersed with scenes detailing the rapid breakdown of his family life as he reverts to an angry, contemptuous ogre practically overnight.
 
The fights themselves are meat-and-potatoes stuff, not that well choreographed or edited and directed in rather lumbering, unimaginative fashion.  A parade of uninteresting opponents engage Shane in fights with little variety or suspense, even when he must take on the most fearsome fighter of all, Dracul the Killer (Florin Roata). 

Performances are adequate at first but get worse as the story's dramatic requirements increase.  Daniels and Weaver are stiffly unconvincing in their emotional confrontations, while the direction and dialogue are equally awkward. 

As Scotty, Arkie Reece is fairly good in his scenes with Corbin Thomas as nephew James, where the two of them have an appealing chemisty.  Thomas, in fact, gives one of the film's most effective performances, as the insecure James loses one father figure and clings desperately to another.  Main acting honors, however, go to old pro Peter Weller who emotes broadly as the sadistic Danny G. and is a fun villain for us to root against.

The Blu-Ray disc from Image Entertainment is in 1.78:1 widescreen with DTS-HD master audio 5.1 and English subtitles.  Extras consist of the featurettes "Behind the Scenes with Peter Weller" and "Filming the Fights", plus a trailer.

FORCED TO FIGHT trudges along a well-worn path to its inevitable all-or-nothing fight finale.  If you find yourself hard-up for entertainment and in a very undemanding mood some time, you might want to check it out.  As for me, I doubt if I'll ever feel compelled to see it again.  Unless, of course, I'm...forced to watch.

  

FORCED TO FIGHT -- Blu-Ray Review by Porfle

BREAKER! BREAKER! -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 3/11/16

 

I wouldn't have been caught dead going to a redneck trucker flick in 1977.  Or even renting it or watching it on HBO in 1988.  Especially if it had anything to do with CB radios, which I regarded with utter disdain.  Not only did I not see movies like CONVOY back in the day, but the C.W. McCall song itself made my soul hurt.

But that was then.  Now, in retrospect, I can enjoy a low-rent indy truck opera like Chuck Norris' BREAKER! BREAKER! (1977) as I bask in its retro-retro charm.  In fact, this simple little tale of good guys vs. bad guys and righteousness against injustice is such utterly unassuming and straightforward fun that its purity is practically bracing.

In only his first starring role, Chuck is hardly the fabled Superman he would later become although he can already spin-kick his share of butt.  Here, with his youth and lack of facial hair making him look a bit unformed, he's an easygoing truck driver who'd rather mind his own business than have to prove how tough he is.

 
But prove it he must when his younger brother, Billy, gets detoured through the small town of Texas City, California during his very first trucker run and finds out its one of those places where everyone is dishonest, especially the scummy police and the man who runs everything as mayor, judge, and whatever else he wants to be at any particular time--namely, the loathesome Judge Joshua Trimmings. 

The Judge is played by familiar character actor George Murdock (EARTHQUAKE, ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN), who was born to play a smalltown tyrant in a baggy off-white suit.  (Not to mention God in STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER.)  He convicts our hapless Billy of various cooked up crimes and sentences him to pay up or go to jail. 

Billy balks, gets beaten up, and disappears.  Cue big brother Chuck coming to town to rescue him and you've pretty much got the rest of the plot figured out.

The big rig angle actually comes into play only at the very beginning of the film and again for its finale, with most of the running time consisting of Chuck dealing with the local yokels (this is one of those Southern-like towns that seems to have been plunked right down in the middle of California) who are all either shining him on or trying to kill him.

Chuck, needless to say, handles himself capably but does so with a minimum of fancy fight choreography, making do with a well-placed spin-kick here and there in addition to some good old-fashioned fisticuffs.

Even the big fight at the end is kept fairly simple, save for lots of slow-motion a la "The Six Million Dollar Man." The mayhem tends to be on the lighter side, too, with nary a fractured limb or geyser of blood spewing from someone's mouth after a crushing blow.

Murdock, naturally, takes home the acting honors, while ERASERHEAD's Jack Nance gets to overact as a manic redneck trucker.  As for Chuck, his skills are pretty basic here--in one scene, it looks as though director Don Hulette filmed closeups of him expressing various emotions so that he could simply insert them wherever needed.  Of course, it's not like we really watch Chuck Norris movies for the acting.

As Arlene, a local woman and single mother who sides with Chuck against the town's corruption and becomes his romantic interest, Terry O'Connor is an appealing presence.  Their romance is quick and virtually without dialogue, with a brief, sappy ballad and a montage of them strolling around in the woods for a minute sufficing to encapsulate their courtship. 

The Blu-ray from Olive Films is in widescreen with Dolby 2.0 sound.  No subtitles.  The sole extra is the film's trailer.

With all of Chuck's trucker friends converging on the town for what might be called a "smashing" finale, BREAKER! BREAKER! finally breaks a sweat after pleasantly coasting along like a big rig on a downward grade for an hour-and-a-half.  It's hardly a blockbuster action thriller, but if you love the 70s, then movies like this are probably one of the reasons why.


Release date: March 22, 2016

Pictures shown are not taken from the Blu-ray

BREAKER! BREAKER! -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

ONE MORE SHOT -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 6/12/19

 

It's hard to explain why I look forward to these Retro Afrika DVD restorations from Indiepix so much.  They're no-budget, totally amateurish productions that imitate Hollywood films on a home movie level, and are often hilariously bad.

But they're often so bad they're good, which is why movies such as ONE MORE SHOT (1984) are so perversely entertaining to me. Granted, those who demand that their viewing material actually be "good" or at least "competent" might well be expected to run the other way as fast as they can. But they'd be missing out on the fun.

Made specifically for black South African audiences who were denied entrance to mainstream theaters during Apartheid, these films are simple, earnest efforts to entertain using practically non-existent resources.

Just seeing how the filmmakers and their players struggle to overcome such drawbacks to produce something worth running through a projector for paying audiences is interesting in itself. And I find it fascinating to see what they were able to come up with.

This time, burly bad guy Tap Tap gets out of prison with one desire: to get revenge on famed kickboxer Johnny Tough, whose testimony sent him up the river. Tap Tap goes to sinister (but in an amusing way) nightclub owner and human trafficker Fly for help, so Fly has the daughter of Johnny's lawyer kidnapped to force him to divulge the location of Johnny's secluded ranch where he trains with his Asian martial arts buddy Chan.

Fly sends three strongmen out to Johnny's ranch, setting up the first in a series of action scenes that have to be seen to be disbelieved.  This is the kind of stuff that kids do in the front yard after watching a kung-fu movie, consisting of a lot flailing hands and feet punctuated by loud "thwack!" sound effects.  Johnny's biggest talent is doing backflips, which don't really help in a fight but look pretty good in slow-motion.

The big finale takes place at Fly's country estate where he's conducting a transaction with a visiting shiek who's in the market to purchase several young kidnapped women.  Johnny and Chan take on all the guards in various slap-fight vignettes, showcasing some of the worst fight choreography ever, until finally it's just between them and the main bad guys.

Technically, ONE MORE SHOT is a mess, even more so than the previous Retro Afrika films I've seen, with more meandering sequences to pad the 59-minute running time such as an opening duo doing incredibly limp breakdancing in Fly's club for eight minutes before the plot even starts. 

Johnny and Chan's training sequence offers another musical montage, as does a long helicopter ride with Fly and the Arab shiek out to the country estate, all accompanied by bad 80s-era techno (including a title song).

As usual, all of this ineptitude is both endearing and strangely compelling as all involved work to put a watchable movie together. When the plot finally gets a head of steam going, the fight scenes (interspersed with shots of Fly displaying his female wares to the shiek) come one right after another.

The cast do their best and are fun to watch. They're much more racially mixed this time--most films in the series have almost all-black casts with the occasional white actor, but this time it's a pretty even mix. 

The clumsy dialogue is all in English this time, another rarity, but with subtitles to help us with the heavy accents.  Two talented Retro Afrika faves, leading man Innocent "Popo" Gamede and comedy star Hector Methanda (ISIBOSHWA, UMBANGO, RICH GIRL) are sorely missed. 

As I've often emphasized, films such as ONE MORE SHOT can be a real hoot, but only if you're inclined to appreciate them for what they are--simple, charmingly amateurish attempts to create entertainment practically out of thin air.  If you're open to that, then this should be yet another chance to have some really offbeat film-watching fun.



Buy it at Amazon.com

Format: NTSC
Language: English (with subtitles)
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Indiepix Films
DVD Release Date: June 11, 2019
Run Time: 59 minutes
Bonus: Trailer

ONE MORE SHOT -- DVD Review by Porfle