Genres

Visitors Review

2013-05-19 18:09:58

Worth A Look For Bisping

The other reviews are dead on. Never Back Down and The UFC have given birth to countless direct to dvd MMA flicks and most of them aren't that good. This one could have been better with a larger budget and UFC's Michael Bisping in the starring role instead of Rudy Youngblood. He doesn't have the look or charisma for this type of film. I like Danny Trejo but he's just grabbing a check here and definitely not in Machete mode. MMA stars, Bobby Lashley, Heath Herring, and Mike Swick appear for a few minutes each in so-so fight scenes but it's not enough. This is the same old down on his luck but exceptional streetfighter makes money to pay off gangster debts dreck but Bisping's swagger is worth a look. Basically, Beatdown is okay for a rental and may even be great at 4AM when nothing else is on cable. I just hope we get to see more of Michael Bisping in action films. Hopefully, some real filmmakers with money behind them will grab The Count and give him a starring vehicle worth more than a rental or late-night viewing.

zlove-1 2013-05-19 04:19:18

Avoid!

This is one of the most painful film experiences I have ever endured.The acting is terrible. The editing is extremely irritating. The storyhas all the dramatic depth of a six year old's school creative writingassignment. The thinly hidden marketing saturating the movie isdistracting. Fight scenes, awful, and in total, around 10 minutes maxof the film's 90 (agonizing) minute runtime. You wanna see real fightscenes, watch Asian cinema. Writing, terrible. Characters, wooden andwith stupid 'backstories' lifted in a hurry from a billion other(better) films. This whole thing reeks of self-indulgence and money,but offer no shred of entertainment. None. Even like Sunday hangoverbrainless action fun. It is that bad. Do not ever watch this film, evenfor free.

charlytully 2013-05-19 08:22:16

BEATDOWN can smack down DAMAGE any day

While the similar MMA-themed flick DAMAGE throws everything but thekitchen sink into its plot--including organ transplant shortages,canine abuse, naked woman suicide attempts, gambling debts, amysterious holy roller Bible verse spouter, implausible coincidences,fight cages plunging through floors, shipping containers-top battlesagainst fearsome "truckers" (Jimmy Hoffa still would be enjoyingretirement if Teamsters fought like this in real life), and about 12guys who appear beaten to death or into comas--BEATDOWN isdown-to-earth plausible when compared to DAMAGE. While it shares manyof the off-putting MMA conventions in depicting bare-knuckle violence(where do these guys get their indestructible hands from?), BEATDOWNhas a linear plot that you can follow without needing to throw yourremote at the TV in disgust. In other words, BEATDOWN can be seen asthe RAGING BULL to DAMAGE's over-the-top ROCKY 5. While BEATDOWN'straining sequence montage looks like Peewee Herman trying to do homageto Sylvester Stallone beating on raw meat in the walk-in freezer (wherewere the health inspectors?), the handlers of all the opponents Brandon(Rudy Youngblood) vanquishes humanely throw in their towels at thefirst opportunity, and most of the fights are finished in 20 seconds orless. I can say from personal experience that this in closer to how thefight game works in real life (which is why it's so important to throwthe first punch!).

2013-05-18 18:44:38

once again a dredaful MMA movie

I was suckered into thinking that this one might be alright, or even good (likeUnrivaled or Undisputed II - Last Man Standing or Undisputed III: Redemption [Blu-ray], the presence of "real actors" like Danny Tejo and Eric Balfour threw me, but this is another piece of junk that is meant to sucker people, MMA fans in paticular. These movies (Never Surrender, Death Warrior, Circle of Pain) are terrible, poorly acted, badly filmed, horribly written, even fans of the fighters should know that they only have cameos and tend to look bad, as in bad acting, both kinds. They do offer a few interesting fight scenes, but uh nothing like the real thing, loud nu metal music played over fights and montages, kinda fun, and gratitous female nudity, awesome. Otherwise, a total dud, and I'm a huge fan of MMA, as well as "star" Michael Bisping, who isn't bad, in a proper vehicle, he could be something. Don't be suckered.p.s.I just found out that the movie's leading actor, Rudy Youngblood, had starred in the wonderfulApocalypto [Blu-ray], and did a fine job, here his acting is just okay, and any star quality he showed in Mel Gibson's film is sorely missing here. This makes me even sadder.

Kelchubordnor 2013-05-14 06:35:55

the movie that could have been so much better

Before I start my review, please don't watch this if you have epilepsyor any reaction at all to flashing lights. I have very bad eyesight andbelieve me this movie hurts to watch. Simply put the details are guy isa fighter has to pay off brothers mob debt and fights underground to doit, throw in a beautiful actress and some very decent mma guysincluding Michael Bisping who is one of the best. That is the story ina nutshell and yes it has been done before a few times. What ruins thewhole thing is the atrocious editing. there is so much camera movement,flashing in and out and I could go on but this movie literally made myeyes ache. And I don't just mean the fight scenes which have beenobliterated by the atrocious editing. The camera seems to be constantlyfighting with the camera man and the director and the editor and nobodywins. This movie would have worked if the camera had stayed focused andjust stayed still. I wont get technical about the quality of mma etc asit is too hard to see anything with this movie. I love my action flicksand to be honest I think mortal kombat had better editing than this .Such a shame. I bought this DVD because I saw Michael Bisping on thecover. Wish I hadn't.

topsecretappleface 2013-05-13 18:00:44

i can't believe how bad this movie was! don't see it!

how did this movie get all these really good actors in it? the story isreally predictable. it shows basically the same fight scene over andover. the main character basically just goes around beating everyone upand then taking to his hot girlfriend, and then beating more people up,but it's not bad enough to actually be funny. the camera man liked tozoom in on everybody's face really stiffly to show how pretty/famousthey were. but even though Rudy Youngblood does have a beautiful face,it just doesn't do the trick for 2 hours. There were jokes that couldhave been funny but the timing was all wrong. Everybody was wearing acowboy hat, and i liked how every time they went on a farm there was adifferent generic animal noise in the background, first chickens thencows etc. The editing looked like was done by a 5 year old who justdiscovered i movie for the first time. the special effects completelydistracted from the story, but that was OK since there wasn't much ofone in the first place. there were so many parts in slow motion for noreason, that once there was actually something dramatic you would becompletely zoned out and miss it! and finally the soundtrack wasterrible.

Justdan_Timberlake 2013-05-12 15:47:57

The acting was fine, the story was okay, but was the editing (!)

I found the main actor quite enjoyable, although he didn't have any bigscenes where he got to act it was a pretty nice restricted performance,and the other actors more or less did fine.It sort of has a more real life feeling with the acting than thetypical Hollywood-acting.So that for me is a plus.The story is good enough, even if they didn't really pull the endingoff as good as they could have, a simple story no big surprises, moreFIGHTING (Channing Tatum) than ROCKY, even though compared with those 2this is not as good.But what I had a problem with was the ridiculous editing, was it doneby Tony Scott's unknown blind twinbrother perhaps? In normal non-actionscenes which are rather wellperformed and constructed for some reasonat the most oddest of times to just hit the zoom-button just to zoomout a second later.And I don't think it was filmed that way either, it looks like theydon't that in the editing-room afterwards, so weeeeeird. And they zoomat the rarest of things too.Yeah this is probably the worst editing I've seen in a long long time,I think maybe the idea was to make it feel more like an action-film orsomething, but it's NOT an action-film jeez... The ONLY time thoseeffects work are in the actual fightingscenes.Luckily they sort of slow down with the crazy editing a bit in...Either that or I just got used to it, almost got a little seasick fromit tbh in the beginning.Acting: 6/10 Editing: 2/10 Story: 5.5/10 Movie: 5/10

Matt Kracht 2013-05-12 01:18:05

Bad, but not the worst

I've seen some truly awful action movies in the past few months. Thegood news is that this is better than Amsterdam Heavy. The bad news isthat it's not much better. The plot is serviceable, though not reallywhat I would call "good". It's got lots of extraneous, unnecessarydetails in it, like dead brothers, dead mothers, bad childhoods,abusive fathers, etc. It's just one big heap of melodramatic back storyfor every character. Now, while I'm grateful for the effort, I have towonder why they thought all that was necessary. The directing was manicand overly stylized, with constant use of slow motion and close-ups ofviolence. The soundtrack was absolutely horrible, consisting of whatsounds like the most derivative and bland music imaginable. On thepositive side, there were some attractive people in the movie, andsometimes they managed to act passably well. The fight choreography wasgenerally pretty good, but the fight scenes were filmed rather poorly.If you like exploitative, MMA-style violence, you may enjoy this movie.Traditional martial arts fans may find the nihilistic, fetishisticviolence to be distasteful and a bit too white trash.If you're desperate for Michael Bay-inspired MMA fights, then I supposethis might be the movie for you.

oolatech2 2013-05-11 09:10:43

Unconventially wonderful and definitely not a chick flick!!!!

I don't know where to begin. I really enjoyed this movie for a numberof reasons. First, the romance between Erin and Brandon did not involvea gratuitous sex scene and the nudity in the film had nothing to dowith the main characters. Their relationship was extremely wholesomeand they spent the majority of their time on screen talking about theirfeelings.Second, It was full of action packed fights with a lot of blood in arealistic manner. Third, while the ending was somewhat predictable, Ifelt there was enough of a twist to keep it fresh. This is not a Rockytype movie! I find most movies make the hero a goat first and this onewas full of excitement from beginning to end.I thought Michael Bisbing who is one of my favorite fighters was goodas Drake, he was playing a former fighter that took fights from time totime to pay the bills. His line delivery was as a matter of factinstead of with feeling but Michael brought his consummate cool whichmade him a likable supporting character. Props to Susie Abromeit (Erin)for playing the drop dead gorgeousgirlfriend without the winy you'll get yourself killed crap. RudyYoungblood (Brandon)and Eric Balfour (Victor) carried the film asactors and I thought they were the two standout performances in thefilm. You may remember Brandon's dad from "From Dusk till Dawn" (as thebartender) his character was a paraplegic ex-abusive parent and widowerthat had found religion to avoid talking about the past and dealingwith his emotions regarding his son.If you are a fan of MMA and enjoy a good fight, then this is a movieyou could watch again and again. Unless yourgirlfriend/wife/significant other is in to extreme realistic violence,you may want to watch this without them.

2013-05-10 18:07:49

Inexcusable douchebaggery makes for a poor film indeed..

I stole this movie from a Redbox machine using a coupon code. After reading the description, I figured it'd at least be passable, with some cool unarmed fight scenes. "Brandon, a respected street fighter, is forced to flee the city after his brother is murdered and the money that was supposed to be paid back to a local gangster is stolen." Sounds cool, right? Wrong. Tapout magically transports us to a world where everyone still lives with their parents, nu metal blasts through loudspeakers everywhere nonstop, and most of the girls in town are probably transvestites. Also, there's hardly a scene without the Tapout logo being prominently displayed in some way. You cannot escape, and you cannot avert your eyes. Be afraid. This movie is essentially a 90-minute Tapout commercial, filled with bland dialogue, high-school-drama-production-level acting, and painfully excessive video effects. "Hey, this 3-second clip of a pickup truck driving down a road is too boring. Better add some camera shake and film grain!! Yeah, that's the stuff!! Hardcore!!" We can only assume that either this movie was edited by a 14-year old, or the camera guy was jerking off nonstop whilst filming. I could find literally no redeeming qualities in this pile of trash. Watching "Beatdown" is actually less fun than burying yourself in dirt up to your neck, then hiring a trio of Wal Mart greeters to beat your exposed head to a pulp with two-by-fours. I would rather light my balls on fire and listen to Insane Clown Posse at maximum volume until my eardrums ruptured than watch this movie again. Remember, I didn't pay a cent for it, so money has nothing to do with my decision. The filmmaker should be driven out into the desert and left for the buzzards, along with all the other "actors".

Comeuppance Reviews 2013-05-08 01:53:28

Beatdown is not really a success.

Brandon (Youngblood) is a tough street brawler whose brother Frankie iskilled by gangsters. Now the gangsters are after Brandon for the 40,000dollars his brother owed. Brandon then flees to a small Southern townwhere he develops a romance and also lives with his paraplegic father(Trejo). It's not long before Brandon enters the undergroundPunchfighting circuit where the reigning champion is Victor Dean(Balfour). It turns out the burgeoning romance is with Dean's sisterErin (Abromeit), and Victor's not happy. Brandon moves up the ranks andeventually faces off against Victor. Who will win? The biggest problemwith this movie is the editing. There are weird, unnecessary cuts, aswell as puzzling camera zooms and spins. The fights are pretty brutalwhen you can see them, as there are plenty of blood-soaked fences (yes,fences!) to show the extreme nature of the fighting. Also quite extremeis the now-prerequisite playing of the song "Wildfire in the Streets"by Tommy Fields. Surely the makers of all these modern-dayPunchfighters must have known that fans don't watch just one of thesethings. If you like one, you probably will like them all, and fanswould notice the constant reappearance of Tommy Fields.The plot is also haphazard, as there is a quick setup with the gangsterGino Ganz which kind of falls by the wayside until much later. All theclichés you know and love are present and accounted for - the trainingsequence and the silly love story, with its insipid dialogue. There'splenty of "Barnfighting", as Southern "redneck" stereotypes are beatenby Youngblood. There's, inexplicably, a TapouT octagon in the middle ofa state fair in the deep south. Their tentacles reach from there toprisons everywhere, as Locked Down (2010) proves.Youngblood is relatively likable, but as you might expect, Danny Trejois the best actor in the movie. He seems like he doesn't care, but itcould be his character.If only the directing and editing were competent, this would be anot-bad modern-day Punchfighter. As it stands, Beatdown is not really asuccess.for more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

2013-05-07 16:20:52

Great fight scenes

This review is from: Beatdown (DVD) I dont understand why all movies have to have love in them??? This is a fight movie yet i has love.... Whatever! Well the fight scenes in this movie are pretty authentic! I really enjoyed them. The actors did a superb job! I like the fact they actulley used fighters in the movie as well! Overall pretty good flick must see if you like UFC & MMA!

2013-05-05 15:59:31

This is the best mma movie yet!

Just to keep this short and simple-I think this is the best mma movie yet! The other ones I've seen are a little cheesy; but I was pleasently surprised with this one. Micheal Bisping is in the witness protection program and helps a young fighter make some money in underground hog farm settings fights. Afterwards, Bisping helps this guy get out of debt in the big city by killing off the young fighters debt collectors who ran off the young fighter in the begining of the movie by killing his brother and then threating to kill him for $60,000.00 dollars.Bisping was in the same situation as the young fighter and was placed in witness protection for killing off his personal debt collectors.

Geoffrey Held 2013-05-05 03:13:25

Not worth the mental beating involved with watching it...

I watched this last night on TV. I have to say it was one of the worstfilms I have seen in awhile. The acting was tolerable and the storyfollowed a basic lineal pattern. A movie to watch if you don't want tohave to dig for the films meaning, this film lacks that entirely. Ithink when they decided to edit this movie that let a little kid gonuts with the visual effects. It in no way added any artistic qualityto the film. There are moments where characters interact for shortperiods of time and then it fades to black. This is a common fade awaymethod but it was used to death in this film. The fights were brutalbut usually ended in the same unsurprising manner. The fights wereaccompanied by rock/metal music that at times fit but not always.Anywho I would steer clear of this Gem.