The Lockdown

For a fighting movie there isn't enough fighting. The fights I would rate as solid, it's nothing new or amazing but it's not horrible there is obvious contact and the camera work is good.

The story is just meh, doesn't really matter, but it spends way too much time on it, could have edited it down.

Acting ranges from really good to abysmal, good performances from the more known actors obviously.

I just didn't care about the characters so the fights themselves were just not that interesting because I didn't care if they win or lose.

It's one of those movies that you can put in the background while doing chores tuning in when there is some fighting.

The movie is a slow-paced prison action movie that copies the story of Undisputed, with a brother, sister, father, a friend, and social media thrown in. The script fails to make the viewers care much about the characters. Some of the action is okay, nothing new, and there is very little of the actual fights that felt like they ended before they began. A little bit more character depth and heartbreak would have worked for this movie. The build-up to the final championship fight is rushed, and the champion fighters are not shown to be very intimidating. The viewers will lose interest at a lot of places due to the slow pace of the movie and lack of good direction.

Here we go again. Yes, it is possible to do a good "prison" MMA on a low budget. Check out what the role of "Boyka" did for Scott Adkin. And yes, there are some truly outstanding MMA films out there -- check out Warrior 2011. (Both of those films are on my list of all-time greats). But this is not the way to go about it. First of all, this is a "gimmick" story that relies on a female protagonist (Caity Lotz) who looks like she weighs 98 pounds soaking wet. The scenes where she beats up several brawny guys at once are just not credible, and not especially well choreographed. Second, the first 90 minutes are mainly waffle and backstory. By the time we get to the payoff, the viewer has simply lost interest. Michael Biehn is given star billing in the press package. Biehn, almost 70 years old, has been doing B-movies for decades. He is a solid performer, but this film flat runs out of steam in the first 20 minutes. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

After "The Art of Eight Limbs" i noticed there is a few more Martial Arts movies coming from the same company in a short ammount of time.

I was really interested in this one because not only is it about prison fights (huge Boyka fan here) but it also star Caity Lotz wich i really enjoyed in the Arrowverse.

Well this movie do a few things right, and a few things wrong. There is a decent ammount of time spent on the siblings and the love and care they have for each others. The story with their father is layout quick and he is immediately presented as a selfish POS.

You can see in the trailer he litterally get his own kids in prison because it will serve his interest. So right away you supose to hate the guy. The movie didn't spend enough time to develope his story either before or after this. And the other vilains are mostly token vilains.

The fights themselves are very decent (without being exeptional either), but the emotional aspect didn't got me engaged enough for them to serve their part. I would say especially in the third act, the movie had me scatching my head a bit.

Basically the very structure of the movie needed some tweaking to get me invested more. I can't really talk about all the issues i had with the script because it would involve spoilers and i want to keep this review spoiler free.

I will say it was a bit better than The Art of Eight Limbs mostly because of the leads being more likable, but it did suffer on the same issues when it comes to the Martial Arts aspects. Basically choreographies well done, but lacking emotions and engagement in the story around them.

The next release by this company will be a Cynthia Rothrock movie, and she has not done one like that in ages, having only small parts and cameos in her recent movie appearance. So im very curious to know how it turn out and will surely review it.

I do apreciate this company putting out martial art flicks wich are not release that often these days, but they really need to refine their scripts in my opinion before filming. Otherwise they do decent stuff with something that seem like a small budget. This movie is good enough for a one time rental but thats about it.

For an action movie, there's surprisingly little action. The fights are decent-not groundbreaking, but well-executed with solid contact an d done DPO was done best skills with low light, The story feels lackluster and drags on longer than it should, overshadowing the action. It could have used some trimming.

The acting varies widely, with strong performances from the well-known actors, but some of the others fall flat.

Overall, I found it hard to care about the characters, which made the fights less engaging because their outcomes didn't really matter to me.

This is the kind of movie you can have on in the background while doing other things, just tuning in for the fight scenes."