Kenny Rice voice over on vale tudo Japan opening scene was a nice touch.
I liked it. But I’m completely biased as I absolutely loved the doc 20+years ago.
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I liked it, my wife hated it and thought it was quite dull. I wanted to love it. I thought the score was awful to the point it was distracting at several points. Boxing is often associated with jazz but MMA? To me MMA is thrash metal.
To me, if you are an MMA old school geek you are going to like it. They did a lot of fan service in the movie including replicating the shitty pyramid sets they had in the Vale Tudo events. I was a little bummed that outside of Kerr and obviously Bas, & maybe Igor, no one else seemed true to form. It’s the problem with sports movies, it’s hard to capture how incredible they are with actors pretending. Bader did a good job, but showed none of the insane intensity Coleman has at all times. Coleman and Fujita also looked small compared to this version of Kerr but actually they were both massive much like Kerr.
I also think you have to wonder if you weren’t an old fan which hardly anyone was back then, is the movie interesting enough to captivate you on the substance alone? If this was about a baseball player, would it still be an interesting watch? I’m not so sure.
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I’ve never heard thrash metal (or metal in general) played in a gym. Especially Jiu-jitsu gyms.
Lots of dub and reggae, Maybe that’s just California though?
Edit:
I can actually see the comparison to jazz in the fact that there is no right or wrong way to do it. Especially in the early days.
Think Anderson silva, he was able to “break the rules” because he had mastered the basics. Like a great jazz musician. I may be adding shit that the filmmaker didn’t intend though.
The only good thing to come out of this is hopefully Kerr getting a huge sack of cash.
The rock is the gayest fag in fagtown.
Also hopefully his cunt wife is portrayed as the selfish, destructive, piece of shit whore she was in the original doc. The fact that they ended up together makes me think they’ll make her a sympathetic character.
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I’m pretty sure Face the Pain is technically nu metal.
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Would be funny if Bader somehow gets an Oscar or some other award nomination for this and Dwayne gets nothing
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This was really just a vehicle for Bader’s acting career!
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Kerr’s story isn’t that interesting. Lee Murray, Jens Pulver, Mark Coleman, Jacob Ortiz, Roger Huerta, etc. All have more interesting stories.
I think you nailed it with this.
It’s like the Rock searched for a character he resembles and said, let’s make a movie out of his story.
There was absolutely nothing new or interesting in the movie that the documentary didn’t have.
I’m an MMA fan, followed Kerr’s career, watched his fights, and even I was bored with the movie.
I can’t imagine how someone unfamiliar with Kerr would find any of it interesting.
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Yeah but Kerr has a riveting documentary that documents a very specific time of the sport in great detail. And it happens to climax with Coleman winning the greatest tournament in the sports history.
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I would disagree that SM was riveting. The best part was Ricco getting obliterated and they didn’t even put that in the movie!
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It so perfectly captures the change that was happening at the time and follows Kerr immediately before his downfall.
It’s a time capsule that shows the wild west of NHB at the time. It shows just how quickly the sport was changing at the time, the odd rule changes from one show to another, the shifting landscape of the sport with Japan being where the best were competing.
It has Kerr, Coleman, Bas, Randleman, Rodriguez, Fujita, Enson, Igor, Renzo and countless other greats of the time. No other sport has an artifact of its early days like the smashing machine.
It should have been a warning to all mma fighters, with the PED abuse, the pain killer addiction, the shitty relationships and how quickly you can go from being on top of the world, to getting your face beaten in.
But that’s just my opinion, I guess you didn’t enjoy it
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I had the privilege of hanging out with the Safdie brothers some years back in Queens, right before they started to become more well known commercially.
They have this cool filmmaking style where they like to cast real people and have them improv their parts amongst the more seasoned actors. As far as I know they invented that idea, and it definitely makes their movies feel realer. It’s very much a documentary style thing they do.
Their movies are usually highly praised by the critics, but I think sometimes not everyone in the general audience “gets it” because they also tend to be plotless, as is real life.
I haven’t seen this film yet, but I thought it was awesome that Benny Safdie was directing it, because I knew it wouldn’t be your typical biopic.
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It was fine. It just didn’t strike me as something that a failed D tackle from the University of Miami would want to recreate.
The Rock announced he would be playing Mark Kerr at a UFC press conference a few years ago and even that crowd was like “Who?”
So yeah I doubt they were banking on Kerr’s name to sell it.
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You guys can all eat my huge OG hog. I loved this movie and it brought back some great memories. This was the best the Rock has ever acted and Bader was good too.
this
I have heard that name but have never seen any of his fights
I do love A24 though so gonna probably watch it when it comes out in streams
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You could tell it was going to suck from the trailer
Absolute dogshit …it’s almost like they asked A.I to make said trailer
Wait wut…. When did you start watching MMA?
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You’re not factoring in the horse meat budget.
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