Starring: Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Zulay Henao

Directed by: Dito Montiel

Sony Pictures

The Official Site of Fighting

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Fighting is the story of two underdogs, tired of being beaten down by life, that come together and try and fight their way out. Literally of course, in the gritty world of underground fighting that leaves the victor with a fistful a cash and loser with nothing but the bruises to remind him how much he didn’t get paid that night.

The film is set in the dirtier half of New York City where a 70’s funk soundtrack sets the stage and gave Fighting an air of old school Scorsese in a dangerous era when walking into a bodega and seeing two guys wail on each other wasn’t so unlikely. The score is fantastic. One of the few golden touches that holds the movie together. The sound of the 70’s is all over this thing except during the big fight sequences. Just as you’d expect to hear some Linkin Park or Limp Bizkit song blare some adrenaline out of the speakers Fighting cues up classical music and then some sort of primal drum circle piece. Totally unexpected choices of music to back up the brutal visuals but INSANELY effective. Each sets a different mood and draws a different reaction while never taking away from the normal bursts of testosterone you’d expect to feel while watching a scene like this. It was an original twist that didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated.

The fighting does what any good action movie should do, it starts off strong and gets progressively more impressive as the movie goes on. While I wouldn’t classify Fighting as an action movie, it was nice to see them take that aspect of the film as seriously as they did. Perhaps a little bit more seriously than the characters themselves.

You see… Fighting’s plot is as painfully conventional as its unexpressive title. It has no new tricks and struggles to tell the old ones with any kind of style. As much as I admire the film’s two leads, Channing Tatum (the fighter) and Terrance Howard (the promoter) both have extreme lows in this movie, acting well enough to support the material but far beyond what we’ve seen they’re capable of. It feels like bad improve as both spout nonsense like two men desperate for a sheet of paper telling them what to think.

The love story was just as improvised but much more natural. It was either better chemistry between Tatum and newcomer Zulay Henao or the fact that two good looking people finding each other is much more believable than two good looking people getting wrapped up in an illegal street fighting ring. (Like Tyler Durden or Chung Li would actually be hot.) It’s more likely that “everyone wants to root for love�. Whatever they were doing it was believable and another bright spot that made the sluggish plot forgivable.

Fighting has a great cast and fantastic director in Dito Montiel who had something to say and said it remarkably well in his debut A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. With Fighting he’s got nothing as interesting to say. Let’s just hope he’s getting his aggression out between masterpieces.

Rating: 5 out of 10 - This movie is sadly forgettable but worth seeing if only for its inventive use of music and the one or two good punches it does throw. With a better script wrapped around those elements this movie could have been something special but I suppose that is the chief complaint of every failed movie. “All it was missing was the perfect script.�

Not for me. I can’t imagine this will be a big draw on DVD. I guess for fans of Tatum or for people curious and with disposable income. But with new releases being between 20 and 30 dollars I can’t imagine that most people are going to be willing to “give it a shot� because it looked “kid of okay.�

Post Grad, The Hurt Locker - After years of being beaten down by a wife’s love of the Gilmore Girls I have eventually come to love them myself. This is no secret. I adore all the G-Girls including Alexis Bledel. Her name alone attached to the coming-of-age, rom com nonsense of a film Post Grad (which I haven’t researched but am reasonably sure must be based on some sort of novel in the vein of Nanny Diaries or Confessions of a Shopoholic that features some cut out illustration of an angular girl and a shoe represented with big bold use of primary colors) gives me hope that it will be more than what it looks to be. Even if it’s not – Batman is her dad!

Post Grad is taking a look at life after school, still not having found yourself and having to move back in with your parents. I’m sure that by movie’s end Bledel will have figured out exactly who she is or at the very least exactly whom she loves. In this case it appears to be the QB from Friday Night Lights. Good for them. They make a cute couple. I still don’t buy that Rory would have trouble finding a job though.

Since the war in Iraq began forever ago we’ve seen a lot of movies made in its honor or to spite it depending on what color of the political spectrum you fall on. Mostly films about our soldiers coming home often focusing on the problems they face readjusting to life after war. I was blown away by In the Valley of Elah and last year’s Stop Loss that both showed us a side of the war that we rarely take into consideration. Of course, most films about the war have not been welcomed at the box office. People go to the theater to escape their problems and let’s face it – the War is a pretty big problem these days. That and the Pig flu. Where the hell did that thing come from?

The Hurt Locker is focusing not on the soldiers coming home but instead facing a very specific dilemma in the line of duty. What I like about it is that it looks focused on their survival over the course of 30 days without really getting into the larger scope of the War. I think if they can comment on the War but concentrate on the singular adventure, this could be a really bad ass war movie that allows the audience to escape while still making its point.

I used to think that titles like Cellular or Paparazzi were bland and generic but Fighting tops them all. As I point out in the comic, the only way it could be even less creative is if it were Fighting 2 because adding a number to a title in order to name its sequel is just lazy marketing. That’s why XXX: State of the Union was so awesome! (just kidding)

A title like Fighting could be clever if the movie was about something else or “fighting� in a less literal way. Like, a movie about a coma patient fighting for life. I’m not saying it works perfectly, you’d have to have metaphors and allegories out the yin yang to make that title work in that instance, but at least it’s thinking beyond the surface. Why couldn’t this movie have been called “Underground� or even something like “Fight in the Bronx�? Both are terrible titles but at least tell you something about the movie besides the activity. I mean - would you go to a movie about baseball called “Baseball�?

As far as “Whoomp There It Is� goes I don’t know what to tell you. It popped in my head as the punch line and wouldn’t pop out. For those of you that have never experienced Tag Team’s classic jam, buckle up… cause this girl knows all the words… and she totally was willing to sit in front of her web cam long enough to prove it.

Just to prove how annoying of a classic it is here’s a cover made for the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie:

Hate to end on a sad note but the loss of Bea Arthur has really hit the Dunn/Jun family pretty hard. We’d recently started watching The Golden Girls on TVLand before bed every night and had fallen in love with Bea’s special blend of “old� and “sarcasm�. I remember when I was younger how much it used to bother me, how I thought she was just being mean to Rose, but the older I got the more I appreciated what each Golden Girl represented and how great Bea was at what she did. Great show. Great lady.

Thanks for stopping by. More tomorrow.