Fighting

I ended up watching this movie with my significant other, because we heard about it from a friend from our Monday Bible Study group. They recommended it because my wife Alex and I have struggled with a similar situation. I've admittedly been around the block when it comes to internet pornography, and at one point my marriage was on the brink because it got out of hand.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The movie starts showing a boxing scene and switches repeatedly throughout between a man struggling to not watch porn, and fighting a bald scary looking man labeled in the credits as "Demon", trying to show the two situations as similar fights that need to be overcome. The main character, Luke kisses his wife goodbye before trying to make a sandwich, but halfway through applying the mayo he looks at his computer with fear in his eyes knowing he can't possibly resist his natural urges. It goes back to the fight scene, which shows him losing pretty badly to Demon, who I assume is meant to represent the demon of pornographic lusts. Just as he types the word "pornography" into a google search bar, he gets a call from his wife who seems to know exactly what he is doing but Luke lies and says he is just doing household chores. This is a familiar scene to me, on account that more than once my wife has tried calling me when she's not home to check in, only to find me out of breath and acting suspicious.

Luke was able to resist his urges for about fifteen minutes as he took out the trash and did some other chores, but eventually gives in and you see a grown 40-50 year old man weeping at his computer screen for being unable to not watch porn. I don't know about most people, but I find it hard to be aroused when crying. At this point in the boxing ring, he is down and almost out and his coach is criticizing him for not going to the gym anymore. This is complimented by a flashback to he and his wife in bed while she asks why he no longer reads his bible or goes to Bible Study. Eventually the movie resolves by him smashing his computer in the driveway as his wife comes home crying and hugging him out of happiness for overcoming his addiction. He wins the fight against Demon and the crowd is congratulatory. There is an outer monologue about how every man has to fight this fight everyday, the good fight for being a better person and resisting your inner nature.

Now, as for my personal thoughts on this movie as someone who has struggled with internet pornography, I found it nice to see some representation for a problem that me and several of my friends have dealt with and are dealing with. In today's day and age it's almost impossible not to see a naked woman on every corner, be it in McDonald's advertisements or on Facebook on your phone. When there is an entire database at your fingertips of all the sinful images and videos your heart could desire, it's almost impossible to resist and stay true to what you know is right.

That being said, I wasn't a fan of how the movie portrayed porn addicts. Not every person struggling is a 40 year old man crying at his computer, and the way he dealt with it wasn't through prayer or seeking community help, but rather through smashing his computer. This is hardly a solution in today's world where a computer is necessary for work or family. If there is one thing I would change about this movie, it would be the ending. The analogy to a boxing match seemed fitting enough, because it does seem like your inner demons are beating you constantly and sometimes it's impossible to get back in the ring and tackle them again and again, but truly deep down you know it is the right thing to do.

I can only conclude that the script for this film was only 3 pages long and basically consisted of phrases like "This guy tries to convince this other guy to fight" "this guy decides to fight" "They fight." all the dialogue had to be improvised by the actors and either they weren't good at improvising or the director wasn't paying attention so they just kept talking and talking and talking and they had to edit together the most coherent dialogue possible. There are only 3 or 4 fights in the film. The first fight lasts a total of I believe 30 seconds before the opponent travels head-first into a water fountain. The second fight gets broken up before it even starts, the third fight (if there was one) I don't even remember. The last fight was the only one that was moderately decent.

Been a while since I watched this movie so I can't elaborate too much, but forgettable fights, characters you don't care about, awful dialogue. I'd say avoid this one unless you enjoy being bored.

It was well made, but clearly not worth seeing in theaters. All in all, besides a number of movies that this resembles (as you can read in the other IMDb comments), it was truly a poor case of storytelling. The dialog was very close to being on the nose allowing for the most predictable storyline and course of events. Best parts were the fighting which was filmed "O.K." and the women, a.k.a. "sex." New York felt very real throughout this movie, but with the American Gangster soundtrack being used repetitively it quickly lost it's realism. Acting was cool, but then again the characters were unbelievable and boring.

I say 4 out of 10. It could have been filmed like clover-field and still received the same rating. If the story would have been more original, then I would have said higher rating.

Oh and the "Antagonist" throughout this storyline made me laugh. My 5 year old nephew could take him down let alone our main character.

I've never in my life felt like my head was going to explode while watching a movie. Throughout the whole film I tried making sense of it all, and finally just came to my senses, it's down right horrible.

Every emotion was misplaced. The dialogue didn't mesh. There was no build up aside from the minor tension between Channing Tatum and Brian J. White.

The movie "cleverly titled" FIGHTING, had not a single worthwhile fight scene in it worth watching. In fact the whole time, I couldn't understand why he was getting praised as a good fighter. It's not even till the very end that you even see a fight where you feel he's got some fighting talent.

I could go into how horrible each actor was, but ultimately decided it wasn't their fault. I'm 100% convinced that the director had no idea how to coach his actors, nor how to write a good script. In fact I'm almost convinced he encouraged them to do horribly.

I felt Brian White did well. And the only other acting that I really could tolerate was the crazy old grandmother. Everything else just seemed like interacting characters were reading from separate scripts.

I used a free promo code to save $1 at RedBox to watch this movie, and I'm still disappointed I didn't get my money's worth.

As bad as this movie looked, I went into it with an open mind but as I suspected it was pretty bad. The dialogue was the worst part by far; it consists of some combination of mumbling and incoherent slang. The acting is terrible despite Mr. Howard doing his best to try and act his way out of the script. The narrative is scattered and cliché and has no original plot elements. You would figure a movie called "Fighting" would at least be saved by its fight sequences but its not, there are some half decent moments but most of the time you can't really tell what's going on however the final fight wasn't to bad. There are some genuine attempts at emotion throughout but usually they fall flat. There were way to many moments where I laughed but wasn't supposed to, especially the speech given right before the last fight. Overall it's a terribly acted movie with an even worst script.