Ji zhan

Unbeatable sells itself as a mixed martial arts film, but it's actually a drama that splits its story between three downtrodden characters: the old boxer seeking redemption from bad life choices, a suffering single mother with a plucky daughter and a rich kid trying to take care of his father. In a typical movie, the latter two story lines would be subplots that would feed into the main story, but instead director Dante Lam spreads them evenly throughout the story. This turns two supporting characters into two main characters, which unfortunately compromises the impact of the A story, namely Nick Cheung's redemption story as the old boxer. The mother and daughter subplot, while well-acted, ends up hogging a lot of the screen time away from Nick Cheung. There were many scenes where Cheung's character wasn't developing because it was focused on the mother and daughter.

Eddie Peng is serviceable as the young rich kid-turned-boxer Siqi. I don't find his character interesting, it's like when Daniel Wu played the villain in New Police Story - a spoiled trust fund baby. Siqi is so naive it is head scratching. It's hard to buy a novice thinking they can learn mixed martial arts within two-and-a-half months to enter a professional competition. Amateur boxing tournaments exist for a reason. To play devil's advocate against myself, one can say that the film's point is his character has an unbeatable spirit (pun intended), and that he's competing to go the distance as a statement to his rich father. I see that's what the film is telegraphing but it's not interesting or compelling. It's almost downright disrespectful to the integrity of the sport itself. On the contrary, I enjoyed watching this would-be trust fund baby being pummeled by truly unbeatable fighters that were level-headed and took the proper time to train. It's depressing that Peng is playing Wong Fei Hong in an upcoming remake.

Nick Cheung is the heart of the film and gives a great performance. Fai is a character with a lot depth and emotional range, but the script keeps cutting him short by having Cheung do comedy. The comedy is funny, but the problem is it's funny to the point of being detrimental to the drama. An emotional scene is quickly followed by a funny scene. The audience is shifted to laughing and immediately relieved from contemplating Fai's emotional struggle. I found it taxing to follow because the Fai character was the only character I cared about. Nick Cheung's media-hyped muscled body is hidden for a huge majority of the film. I remember reading an interview with Christian Bale for American Psycho in which he indicated that the Patrick Bateman's muscled body were intentionally sculpted to be 'narcissistic muscles', not functional muscles. There is a case of that going on here with Nick Cheung's body, because most mixed martial artist aren't sculpted like Greek statues. When Cheung fights, I was pumped. But there was too little of it.

The fight choreography is tough and brutal but it's ruined by odd camera placements and choppy editing. The glossy arena didn't help either. If the actors really did train for the film, they should theoretically be able to do 1-3 moves before a editorial cut. Andy On shows up to play what he plays best, a cocky video game boss. When On arrived, the fights started to feel more choreographed. Overall I've seen MMA action done better in other films and ended up enjoying the training montages more.

Huang Bao Qiang shows up in a cameo role because he's popular from the success of Lost in Thailand. How is his presence relevant to the story? Nothing, and here's my point. There is a lot of box ticking going on in this film, like an investor trying to craft the perfect combination of an award-winning drama and a box-office hit. You have the award-winning body-transformation lead performance, the pretty boy to secure the young crowd and the single mother storyline to make sure everybody squeezes a tear. Unbeatable has already won 2 acting awards at the Shanghai International Film Festival, and good for it. For the rest of us who are not looking to win, I refer you to Gavin O'Connor's Warrior, a MMA film that had a better story and bigger heart. Lastly, Unbeatable could have been a great film. But by a lack of balance of its multiple story strands, a great film was only telegraphed, not delivered. It could have used more punch.

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Dont waste your time watching this garbage movie... You will repent watching this. Worst direction... Worst action... No action at all.. amateur hour... These reviews here must be paid... Doesn't even deserve a single... I was bored outta my mind watching this piece of ***t... This review is coming from a guy who loves action movies.. n loves movies like... Rocky series... Undisputed series... Redbelt... Warrior... Raging phoenix... Chocolate.... blood and bone.. never back down..

Watch this latest MMA action film in theater, Hong Kong director Dante Lam has a sturdy reputation in his action-packed thrillers in recent years (THE VIRAL FACTOR 2012, THE STOOL PIGEON 2010, BEAST STALKER 2008), this time around, he opts for another kind of action, the point-blank MMA fighting, summons a pan-Chinese cast (Cheung, On and Keung are from Hong Kong, Peng, Kao and Liu are from Taiwan, Mei, Li and Wang are from mainland China while youngster Lee is from Malaysia), it also imposes a daunting challenge for two leads Nick Cheung and Eddie Peng, especially for Cheung, at the age of 47 he works extremely hard to gain a brawny figure to play the washed-out former boxing champion.

There aren't a glut of hot-blooded hand-to-hand combats (4 is the exact time), instead Lam and his screen writer team manage to consolidate the context of these two fighters' characteristic backdrop stories and furthermore justify their own causes to fight, Peng is to prove himself in front of his life-beaten and alcohol-abusing father and Cheung is to reinitiate his own potentiality and farewell to his squandered youth. Those are the perpetual themes of sport films, they are soul-inspiring and heart-touching at their best, but over-elaborated and shortchanged for its pragmatism at their worst. Other than the white-knuckle combats in the cage, which has been recorded faithfully with swift and precise camera-work to achieve the sensational verisimilitude (and very impressive pre-fighting training sequences). The entanglement between Cheung and a pair of mother-daughter (Mei, a single mother who is mentally unstable due to a past trauma and Lee, her premature daughter whose Pollyannaish nature under an impoverished situation does strike a chord to any soul with a tender spot) occupies the majority of the narrative, the function of main female characters in the male-driven genre always recedes to either a frail victim (Mei) or a redeeming touch of guilelessness (Lee), the shackles need to be innovated, yet it is a long way ahead.

UNBEATABLE is a strong contender in next year's Hong Kong Film Awards (along with Johnnie To's BLIND DETECTIVE 2013, 7/10), they represent the caliber of the technique peak and the liberation of telling a story without pampering audiences' ostensible reactions from an art form's cheap face value, which is far more self-aware and less money-seeking than most of the players in the over-bloating Chinese film market nowadays.

It really makes me wonder if the Chinese think you can train to be an MMA fighter in two months, but this is the same country that thinks kung fu fighters can fly, so maybe that's the logic behind it. The surrounding stories were interesting and maybe if the guy was training to play competitive Solitaire, it would have been believable. But the whole time I was watching it, I was distracted by the thought of real MMA fighters who train their entire lives for what this movie makes a mockery of.

More solid than I first thought, but also more sentimental than needed be. But the execution saves it all.

This is a story where 3 sets of lives comes together in Macau: a ex-champ boxer, an aimless young man, and a down and out mother-daughter.

So it goes through the 3 acts: the background, the middle struggles, and the triumphant finish. All predictable, all about redemption (again). The sentiments are just full to the brim. The MMA sequence are good enough to behold. And there are the comic reliefs to breakups the mundaneness. However, the execution, the shots, the editing, the color, the settings, holds the atmosphere, tension together into a nice pace.

You can see how the last fight ends miles away. But no complaints here as it was well done.