Circle of Pain

I'm not really much of a Mixed Martial Arts fan to tell the truth. I watch professional wrestling (a man deserves his guilty pleasures, okay?) and I had a passing interest in Mixed Martial Arts in my teen years, but that's it. So I'm not really aware of "Tapout" or whatever it is, other than the fact that 1.) I see guys wearing "Tapout"shirts in town (and I've seen them in Wal Mart) and 2.) That they've released several Straight to DVD movies via Lionsgate, those purveyors of bad exploitation trash on DVD. So It was only a matter of time until I watched one of these movies, and I decided to go with "Circle of Pain", which while better than other "Tapout Presents..." ventures, is still a terrible movie.

Dalton Hunt (Tony Schiena) is a retired fighter whose been living a quiet life. Thing is, Colin "The Brick" Wahle (Heath Herring) is about to beat his record. So thanks to his pal Wyatt (Dean "I was Superman and now I can't get a role worth a damn" Cain) that he put in a wheelchair and the villainous director of a MMA company named Victoria Rualan (Bai Ling) telling him he has to, Dalton must come out of retirement to battle Wahle.

One of the things that's really noteworthy about "Circle of Pain" (and other "Tapout Presents..." movies") is how cheap the whole thing looks. The production values aren't exactly shot on video bad, but they essentially resemble those of a soft core skin flick. Also notable is that like it's predecessors, the movie suddenly becomes something of a soft core flick, with sex scenes thrown in for no reason whatsoever other than to pad out time. Apart from that, little if anything stands out in this movie, which is amateurishly directed by Daniel Zirilli, features few if any invigorating fight or action scenes, and is guilty of false advertising (the movie advertises Kimbo Slice as the star, but he's only in the film for two scenes.) Also, the acting is (as expected) terrible. Look, people pay to watch these guys beat the tar out of each other, not for their acting skills (though Herring at least seems to be having fun.) Dean Cain (who must curse the name of Terri Hatcher every day of his life) in particular is bad, seeming to be bored and uninterested as if he's only doing this for the paycheck. Hell, the only reason this isn't getting a 0/10 is because of Bai Ling. An underrated actress (with credits including "The Crow", "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "The Beautiful Country"), she seems to know what kind of movie this is, and plays the villain to a hammy T, delivering the only fun performance in the movie.

As a whole, there is not reason whatsoever to watch "Circle of Pain", which doesn't feel like something made for MMA fans as much as it feels like a cheap cash grab. I do wish that Tapout and Lionsgate would stop releasing these movies, but it's obviously not going to happen anytime soon.

I usually like martial arts movies. This one is a pretty mainstream martial arts movie. The story is a mainstream and predictable one.

Simple as the most of the martial arts movies you can find nowadays. The acting is OK and the fighting scenes are pretty good. Main character and the opponent is good.

There are little too explicit scenes but kind of what you see in most of the nowadays movies.

Overall enjoyable. Works specially if you are a mainstream fight movies fan.

Nowadays you will find better fighting movies. But this does the trick.

Some major errors in this copycat plot. the biggest being the plaster cast on the guys broken right arm or is it left arm.. I guess they couldn't remember. This movie deserves a huge rant but at the same time does not deserve the effort, if a little more effort went into the movie then it would deserve more of a rant! Feel really sorry for dean Caine in this and although he does OK Every scene in this movie is a rip off of something better. Writers completely lacked imagination Could almost be in the comedy genre There are so many better things to do with 85 minutes of your life. This movie is not recommended and should be avoided. This is a Truly predictable and dire effort by all.

This film looks like it was filmed and written in a day. Ridiculous 'action' scenes, dialogue that must have been written by a 10 year old, truly awful music that didn't fit any scene and 'acting' that defies belief. When Dean Cain is head and shoulders the best actor in it you know you have reached the bottom of the lowest barrel. And even this is his worst performance by some margin.

It begs the question who is this film aimed at? My kids sort of liked it but they are way below the 15 age rating, so if that is the target audience why the nudity and bad language? I fail to believe that anyone with half a brain over the age of 13 would enjoy this joke of a film.

Without doubt this in the top 5 most pathetic movies I have ever watched, if not the most pathetic. Not one redeeming feature could be found except mercy of mercies it is a short film and for that I was truly truly grateful.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I AM A MMA fan and I also fight. (female fighter btw). Anyway, Mixed Martial Arts Movies are not always the best and this was one more bad movie to add to the file. However,I must confess, the action and fight scenes in the movie did have me cringing. Cringing in a good way because they were very believable and real. Its not surprising that REAL fighters were used and most did not seem to be pulling punches either. By pulling punches, I just mean, they were not stunt choreographed fight scenes where "pretend" punches and kicks were placed. Sure, some of them HAD to be faked but most...were not. That was the ONE cool thing about this movie. Besides this, the camera angles were HORRIBLE and the acting just as bad. The HD camera being used to film this wasn't so bad but the editing sucked and these things combines made the look of the film cheap and hard to watch. After about 25 mins...you really just want to turn the sad thing off! I would not pay money to rent this nor would i watch it on TV for more than the aforementioned time frame. Might be worth it if you are doing a bit of training on the side and just want to pick up some super cool street fighting moves...lol:P