BRAZILIAN BRAWL is an extremely amateur feature film that stars The Machado brothers, a real life family of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champions and instructors. The film may be utter trash, but these guys know their stuff. Jiu Jitsu fans may appreciate this opportunity to see these brothers putting some of their impressive moves to use in a “real-world” setting.

Former student of Bruce Lee, martial arts legend in his own right and sometime actor Dan Inosanto makes a cameo appearance as a farm owner in Southern California who is killed by a corrupt sheriff and his hired thugs in an attempt to claim his land. Easily recognizable and prolific character actor Geoffrey Lewis is in a throwaway role as a corrupt town official and the thugs’ leader. A surviving worker calls up the Machado brothers who head up from Brazil to save the farm. They get into a series of brawls with the thugs, befriend a helpful waitress and finally uncover a stash of weapons for use in repelling the sheriff and his men when they assault the farm.

Everything about this film screams “no budget.” Indoor sets are threadbare, the acting is abysmal and the camera work is shoddy. A farmhouse explosion looks exactly like the miniature on fire that it is. The “rap” theme song reciting “Bad boys from Brazil” plays frequently and is awful. Perhaps worst of all, the filmmakers seem to have no concept of continuity or the method by which a film maintains consistency from shot to shot. During the final siege, characters are seen fighting and shooting all over the place, seemingly at the same time. From an editing perspective, it’s a complete disaster.

Three of the Machado brothers are featured with John Machado taking the lead. In spite of the horrible filmmaking standards surrounding them, they do look just as tough as they are in the ring. Their profane dialogue, face paint, bare-chested posing, and Commando-style gunplay is laughable, but these guys certainly fit the image of brawlers with their muscled frames and lowered brows. The Jiu Jitsu martial arts they perform is, of course, the real thing, if exaggerated and this is about the only reason anyone would want to watch this film.

Viewers can expect to see numerous takedowns, limb breaks and holds. One thing is for sure, these guys fight to win and their tactics are downright dirty from biting off ears to shooting their enemies in the back. This would be perhaps the only other positive element of the film. The fights are a little more realistic and show a bit of what a real fighter might have to resort to in a do or die situation, which is undoubtedly a lot uglier than in most movies where the hero usually plays fair.

At just over an hour, BRAZILIAN BRAWL is like a glorified fan movie that just happens to include a few real martial arts experts. No doubt, if the Machado brothers were thrown into a film with a real budget and quality direction they could potentially become action stars on par with Jean-Claude Van Damme at his best, but it won’t happen with a stinker like this.

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