An average movie

I didn't expect much from this movie and, indeed, it was nothing really amazing. At first, it seemed that it was going to be some kind of juvenile Fight Club but, no, after introducing this concept (not really interesting if you ask me), they just dropped it within 5 minutes without coming back to it at any moment. Why would they show this to us if they decide to go towards a completely different direction?!? Anyway, after that, the rest of the movie was just a MMA version of The Karate Kid. Indeed, they faithfully followed the genre with the mentor, the douchebag, the love interest (who, of course, used to date the douchebag), of course the training montage with some inspirational music and the final showdown. I must admit it, it was actually well made but so unoriginal, so predictable, I really had a hard time to care about the whole thing. At the end, there was even this tournament, when the two guys were supposed to fight it off in the final but, no, instead they end up fighting on the parking lot... The makers probably thought it was a neat way to go against expectations but it wasn't. I mean, why should we bother at all with this tournament if they eventually will fight on some random parking lot?!? The other thing that annoyed me was the usual message you get in those movies that the main character shouldn't fight... I always find it some hypocritical BS... I mean, if you watch this kind of movies, of course you want to see them fight, of course you want to see them kick some ass and because it's a movie, nobody is actually getting hurt, so in this case, violence is fine as it is pure and simply entertaining so just cut the crap... To end on a positive note, Djimon Hounsou was dependable as usual and Cam Gigandet had a nice charisma but both characters were reduced to some disappointing stereotypes. To conclude, if you love this genre, you will probably like this movie but I thought it was pretty average and it is eventually not really worth a look.

5/10