Perfect Addiction

Watched the movie, and Enjoyed it. It is a good movie from various aspects... ... such as directing, acting, cinema-photographing, atmosphere, the ambiance of the gym-s and the fights, the training, the movements, and the devotion of the young actors for conveying the characters.

When reading the actors background, you don't notice any martial arts experience there, but... they obviously trained much, and well, for their roles in that movie making. Precise, direct, economic movement fighting.

And kudos for the director for her courage in that MMA direction. She deserves it. The director did not prolong the fights for the sake of attracting "fight oriented" audience. But retained the focus on the story.

The movie as story telling, is not perfect, but it is believable and flowing. As the phrase goes... "kurz und scharf" (= "brief and sharp" = ~ "straight and to the point").

That movie's name, and subsequently its "description" here and elsewhere... are misleading and not fit with its contents. Pity. It might draw 'wrong' viewers to it. I wish the description would be changed...

Usually I refrain from writing reviews here, but prefer to be reading them. But now... as this movie is still fresh in the arena... :-) and I see only one review ...which missed entirely the whole point of that movie making (and pulls to misleading directions...), I thought to do something about it... also, at times, I look at the movie and its fights from a different perspective, as been dealing with various martial arts (mainly Budo Taijutsu) for over 46 years, (as part of "way of life" although dealing with visual arts, design and architecture as my mainstream).

So. In short, watch and enjoy.

I was really looking forward to this movie adaptation, as the book is actually quite good. However, the first strike against this film is the fact that it has its female lead narrating, and giving a play-by-play of every single thing as it happens. The viewer should be able to intuit the feelings of the actor based on their performance ,not hear juvenile inner monologues about how situations have made them react. The false bravado she displays doesn't exactly lend credibility to the movie, or her role in it. Ross Butler is the only person in this entire production that doesn't over act or make you under value him as an actor. It was OK, but it could've been so much better. Perhaps a different lead actress, one who didn't constantly pull faces,would've made all the difference .

Sometimes a film tries a bit too hard - Castille Landon can definitely direct, she has some good moves up her sleeve and the fight scenes are well crafted.

Boxing movies are not the most common idea so this one at least has an interesting angle.

Execution is a bit of a miss.

Voice over in film can be sometimes unpleasant. This is an example of it not helped by Kiana Madeira who simply can't act and lacks personality. Her voice is monotone so the voice over from her is boring. The character is interesting, the performance not so much.

Matthew Noszka isn't that far off with his acting either but he is incredibly, absolutely, amazingly GORGEOUS! Plus he doesn't have to do much, so it's not that noticeable. He does the bad boy well.

That leaves us with Ross Butler who by far is the best performer of the bunch. He rises above the material and gives it his shot. He is HOT too, but has the acting chops to back it up.

The music soundtrack is a bit annoying too.

There's a dream scene though which is hotter than a lot of movies of recent years.

Stronger execution, a more enthusiastic lead and focus would have helped.

I felt like it jumped so far in between each scene and the way the characters interacted it was like I questioned if I'd accidentally skipped a scene or wasn't paying attention. Like they made the movie hoping people who read the book only watched it so they could fill in the gaps and bugger the people who hadn't read the book 🙃 ....

It had the potential to be a pretty good story if they just focused on filling in the details and building up the tension more between the characters more. There didn't appear to be real sexual tension between any of the main love interests.....

Wanted to love it!!

Everything in this movie just feels off. The dialogue is choppy and a lot of times feels like it's written by a highschooler, a lot of the acting is so so, the main characters motivation and drive seems to flip flop all over the place and some of the editing is just confusing. And what is with the constant narrating?! It was so condescending to the audience. Heaven forbid we would be given a chance to figure some of the plot out for ourselves! No, every single feeling and thought needs to be rammed down our throats through narration just so there can't be a shred of doubt about what the writer means. Even though most of the times the female lead is literally describing what we are looking at! The only reason I'm giving this 5 stars is because there are some moments where I feel the main characters have some chemistry. Mainly when they are being playful and there is witty banter. The moments they are having 'a heartfelt moment' felt so forced to me and the dialogue in these scenes was so bad, it becomes funny. Alas though, I don't think this is meant to be a comedy.