Chokehold

Guys such as Casper Van Dien and Lochlyn Munro have both become certified bad B movie brand names. Munro has been showing his face in most Steven Seagal's bad movies, Van Dien once could be a break-through star but later failed after several unsuccessful movies, and now also became a throw-back B movie actor since only movies with limited budgets and terrible screenplays would throw bones to him.

This film is so bad, signed up several non-talent females to play some entry-level MMA female fighters with a terribly scripted, poorly directed B-movie. The storyline is so weak and cracked apart all over the place, some scenes were almost clueless. Pointless fights with unnecessary cruelty for the female actors to perform, breaking elbow or even thighs or knees. But there's almost no storyline at all. What a joke, how dare you guys call this as a watchable movie?!

I was surprised very recently to find this movie. Never heard of it before, probably because it is very "indy", and i likely seen almost every fight movies made in North America since 88 and up so everytime i find a new one from a few years ago, its very welcome. Trailer looked promising.

So lets start with the main character, Zoey. According to the IMDB page she is played by a real MMA fighter that only done 1 movie total (beside a few appearence as self) so therefore you have to give her some slack on the acting/line deliveries.

I watched the movie dubbed in french and since its one of those very low budget indy flick, obviously this was a rather poor dub, but im kinda used to them by now. So i can't really judge too much the actual acting myself but her screen presence was fine and she performed well during the fight scenes.

There is one complain i have to get out of the way tough, wich baffled me especially knowing she is a real fighter. Her hair are litterally in her face every time she fights. All other fighters in the movie have them tied up solid like every MMA fight you would see, but Zoey always have one eye litterally hidden. I don't know if that was an artistic choice, a demand of the actress, or else, but this is the one thing that i kept getting annoyed at because no one would enter a fight purposely obstruing one of their eyes.

That out of the movie, i think overall Melissa Croden was more than fine for this movie. Casper Van Dien is not in it a whole lot, but he does have some action and more than just a small cameo. He is obviously center stage on the cover as a marketing way tough.

Lets talk about the action. I think overall the movie delivers very well there. There is a bunch of fights and they are overall well done. Some have unique flavors like a band playing in the background or stuff like that, wich add variety. There is plenty of violence and blood for a more gritty feel. The CGI bone breakings were not the greatest effects but camera cut fast and if you don't focuss "too much" on them, its alright.

Story is your generic revenge plot in an underground fighting rig, but its something i personally always enjoy and never get tired of. So it worked fine for me.

Overall you have to watch this movie knowing its an indie flick made on a small budget. I think they did great for what they had and if you enjoyed 90s US martial arts movies you will find some enjoyement in this. For me it is a solid 7 on my scale as a movie that i found entertaining and enjoyed for 1 viewing.

Of course I sat down to watch the 2019 movie "Chokehold" solely because that Casper Van Dien was on the cast list. So imagine my surprise when I realized just how little he was actually in the movie.

Now, the storyline told in "Chokehold" is pretty straight forward and very easy to follow. It is a simplistic revenge fighting movie that does little to challenge the intellect of the viewers. Yeah, this movie is essentially a movie where you just lean back and watch the ladies duke it out.

And that was essentially all that there was to this movie; women fighting. And that made for a rather mundane and somewhat boring movie experience. Sure, I believe that there is an audience out there for a movie such as "Chokehold". I, however, wanted a movie with a bit more contents to it than what writers Brian Skiba and Craig Michael Hall delivered with this 2019 movie.

The acting in the movie was dubious at best. So you shouldn't sit down to watch "Chokehold" and expect to see a myriad of spectacular acting performances. The majority of performances were actually wooden and rigid. But I suppose that had a lot to do with the fact that the characters in the movie were bland, pointless and mediocre.

Yeah, the writing wasn't the biggest force of this movie, neither in terms of script and story, nor in terms of characters with depths and appeal.

"Chokehold" is the type of movie that came and went without leaving a lasting impression in any way. I didn't even know about it before now in 2021, as I had the opportunity to sit down to watch it. And I know that this is not a movie that will find its way to my TV a second time around.

My rating of "Chokehold" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. And that is based mostly on the fighting sequences alone, as the movie offered little else actually.

Crappy story, crappy directing, crappy acting, crappy badly shot and edited action. Did I say this is crappy? But still better than some of those crappy Merhi martial arts disasters. But still crappy!

After about 15 minutes, I started to fast-forward to the 'action' scenes, which were comically entertaining. If you can sit through this entire film, you either deserve a medal or need some serious counselling. Tried to imitate a few other movies (like 'Rocky') and failed miserably. Total waste of time, even using my fast-forwarding technique. Hard to believe someone put the time and money into making this.