Fighting

Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum) is a NYC street hawker. Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard) leads a team of hustlers and tries to run him off. Shawn is able to fight them off. They meet up again and Harvey offers him an underground fight. Martinez (Luis Guzmán) is another promoter. Zulay Velez is the single mom waitress love interest. Evan Hailey is a rival fighter who was on the same college wrestling team coached by Shawn's father.

This has a feel of something more interesting than a B-movie. Terrence Howard does that to his films. He makes it better than it should be. This is most notable for an early starting role for Tatum. He has solidified this character type with a chip on his shoulder. The fight scenes tries to be indie gritty. Other than that, this movie doesn't stand out.

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.

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.

Dito Montiel's film has been advertised as the 'Rocky of our generation', however I do believe they were referring to the fifth film in the Rocky franchise. Predictable, boring, tedious, lifeless are just a few words I could use to describe this film, but I really only need to use one; terrible.

Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum) is your typical working-class boy who is taken under the wing of an ageing con-man named Harvey (Terrence Howard) and given the opportunity to make his American dream come true by participating in various back-room bare-knuckle fights. Oh, and the stereotypical love-interest in the form Zulay (Zulay Henao) is also thrown into the mix. Now, despite this description describing various films from the last few years (never mind the last few decades), it contains three huge, jaw-shattering constraints: 1) Despite being named Fighting, the film ironically contains very little fighting or brawling in regards to its hundred-minute running time. And when we do get to see some face-bruising action, the Director seems to get incredibly giddy with the camera and what we are left with is some Paul Greengrass jerkiness that allows you to observe very little especially when the camera is thrown into the heart of the action.

2) Terrence Howard puts a little effort into his character and drags out a performance worthy of a film better than this, however Channing Tatum does not follow his lead. His stony expression and Brando-style mumbling is just plain annoying and unconvincing, yet he is the lead protagonist at the forefront of the film, and his performance drags the film down considerably.

3) Finally, Munic and Montiel's script has about as much weight as a feather and as punch as a fighter out-cold on the mat. We learn little about the characters until late into the film when there life stories seem to just be thrown around quickly to fill various plot-holes. While, the majority of the dialogue is just clichéd and cringe-worthy, most notably a scene at the end of the film that precedes the final fight sequence, which can only be described as hilariously idiotic.

Fighting is crime against cinema. It is a film which gives the audience absolutely nothing, yet takes from them their hard-earned cash in the form of their admittance fee. The only reason I can think why this film was distributed to theatres instead of being a straight-to-DVD affair, is down to the influence of having a star like Terrence Howard in the picture. Don't waste your time or money on this abomination.

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.