Underground, MMA-style fighting gets the dramatic treatment in director Dito Montiel’s sluggish tale of a small-time hustler (Terrence Howard) in New York City who introduces a homeless street hawker named Shawn (Channing Tatum) to the world of underground prize fighting. While getting involved with an attractive single mother (Zulay Henao) struggling to care for her daughter and elderly mother, Shawn rises up through the underground fighting ring which puts him on a collision course with a professional fighter (Brian J. White) who happens to be the former top student of his estranged father, a wrestling coach. Despite its title, FIGHTING is anything but a fight movie. It’s mostly a bland, slow-moving drama with an underdeveloped, inadequate script and brief bouts of brawling dominated by jerky camera movements and quick-cut editing to mask a lack of quality screen fight choreography and execution.
A stiff physical and dramatic performance from Tatum makes me wonder why he’s getting lead roles in mainstream action-oriented films like FIGHTING and G.I. JOE. He has a swimmer’s build, rugged looks and plenty of insubstantial stoicism but none of this makes up for a complete lack of charisma, personality or any suggestion that he is in command of his roles or his action performances. Tatum’s perpetual lack of emotiveness mirrors the colorless tone of this movie.
FIGHTING reeks of desperation in its failed attempt to channel the working-class heroism that Sylvester Stallone used so well in ROCKY in an effort to create a meaningful MMA-related film that speaks to this generation. Montiel goes to great lengths to populate his film with images of everyday life, often with the same awkward interactions of the real world that rarely make it into movies. Yet from a storytelling standpoint, the film leaves its main character too underdeveloped, stereotyped and distant for the viewer to really care that’s he’s just an everyman. We never get to learn much about him and he never seems to take control of his life outside of a handful of fights. The film may not be as juvenile or pandering as NEVER BACK DOWN but it falls far from reaching its aim of being taken seriously as a drama.
I like Terrence Howard as an actor and he has plenty of substance but little to work with in this role. He plays Harvey Boarden, a petty street hustler with dreams of getting a big score and opening up a restaurant. His relationship with Shawn is supposed to form the nucleus of the movie but it just doesn’t work. There is never any real substantial interaction or development between the two. It’s difficult to figure out who Harvey is and what drives him. I sense Howard is trying to channel a personality more developed than the one he was actually playing so we’re left with a lot of inner turmoil and quirkiness conveyed through Howard’s performance and little story-wise to back it up.
Other attempts to bolster the dramatic angle of the film never come together. Shawn’s persistent interest in and pestering of a waitress and single mother come across as unintentionally creepy rather than charming, especially when he appears so inadequate to manage the situation. After all, he’s homeless, not too bright, sloppily dressed, and offering her money he’s earning from beating guys up in backrooms. No responsible woman in her right mind would want to have anything to do with someone like that. Then there is Shawn’s goofy rivalry with pro-fighter Evan Hailey (White). It’s never really clear why they hate each other or why Evan, who has clearly found success in his life, would waste his time fighting Shawn in an underground fight.
The biggest letdown with this film isn’t the weak drama but the fighting. The movie is called FIGHTING. If I named a movie FIGHTING I would make damn sure it had some pretty awesome fighting in it. What we get is an attempt at realism, meaning several non-stylized bouts without the Hong Kong influence but also without the entertainment value of better Hollywood skirmishes that trade style for realism in films such as FIGHT CLUB and THE BOURNE IDENTITY. The most heinous crime committed is the shaky camera swooshes that seemingly occur with every blow. It’s as if the camera had been mounted to the combatant’s arms. Add to this heavy, heavy cuts that reduce each fight to a series of extremely short clips tossed into a digital tumbler and spliced back together. I am aware this technique is intentional. It’s a way for a filmmaker to inject an element of confusion and chaos, both to put the viewer into the perspective of the fighter but also to mask that the screen fighters really are not doing anything to each other. It’s a gimmick and should not be a part of a filmmaker’s arsenal unless they really know what they’re doing. The BOURNE films are about the only films I’ll give any filmmaker outside of Steven Spielberg a pass for in using this technique and even then, I’d say it was wearing thin by the third entry.
Another problem is the failure to define Shawn’s fighting ability. Is he trained in mixed martial arts or wrestling, like his father? There is never any suggestion of what makes him a good fighter. Even his aggressive nature is poorly defined. We learn that at some point he made the mistake of hitting his father and didn’t stop, but why? He admits he doesn’t know the answer. Was he abused as a child or neglected? There are too many questions left unanswered for the viewer to form a complete picture of who Shawn the fighter is. He’s undisciplined, trains on city subways and fights sloppy. When his third opponent is revealed as being played by professional kickboxer Cung Le barely half way through the movie I immediately felt this movie had just reached its finale. Unlike everyone else in the movie, Le carries himself like a fighter and frankly should have beaten Tatum and taken the lead role from him like a title belt. It’s not an issue of a real fighter having to be in the lead. It’s an issue of the lead looking and acting like a real fighter. Chiwetel Ejiofor was not an MMA fighter before starring in David Mamet’s REDBELT but because he is a good actor and Mamet knew how to direct him, he gave a credible performance.
A fighter Channing Tatum is not and while this film would have benefited from better casting, it is still a flawed, lesser work that should have undergone more development and rewrites before going into production. This is especially true if the intention really was to make a ROCKY for the new millennium because FIGHTING is not even close.
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
Channing Tatum • Cung Le • Fighting (2009) • MMA
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