Estrondo na Escuridão

I always been a fan of Martial Arts movies so when i see a new one release i try to watch it as soon as possible. When i saw Aaron Eckhart in the main role, i was a bit surprised tough as the guy is not really known to do martial arts movies.

Turn out the movie is more of a drama but it does have some fairly brutal and entertaining fight. Yet if you tune only for the fights, you may get disapointed as they are not numerous enough for a fight movie fan. Think of it more like that Tom Hardy movie call Warrior. A drama about a character set in a fight background.

Aaron Eckhart's character Jack is a very broken man and the first half of the movie is a bit dark and hard to follow at times. You wonder where this is all going but the second half make a lot more sense and i dunno what it is with Bella Thorne, but every time i see her in a movie i feel she bring a lot of charisma and get me hook to her characters, even if she rarely in any big movies or huge roles.

Overall this was an interesting movie wich i enjoyed watching. I don't think the replay value is there to watch it again so i would recommand a rental instead of a purchase, but its definately one worth watching once. If the first 40-45 minutes confuse or bore you a bit, give it a chance and stay for the rest, its worth it.

Jack Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is a bare knuckle fighter struggling with hallucinations after years of underground fights. He gets kidnapped by a lowlife for his large debt to Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). He manages to crash the truck and escape. A traveling carnival happens upon the crash site. Annette (Bella Thorne) is the tattooed erotica lady.

This is an amazing performance from Eckhart. The plot is a bit of a mess. I put half of it to the unstable mind of Jack Boucher. The other half is still a mess. There is some good atmosphere, but the plot construction is wrong. I actually watched this and Michael Farris Smith's other movie Desperation Road back to back. There is a connecting style between the two gothic southern crime drama. I like the style, but this writing is not good enough.

And not even Aaron Eckhart is very good. Well, he is in a way but I sure do not believe in his character one bit. And the girl playing the Lady with tattoos is just plain a horrible actress. I think the only believable person / character is the Circus Director. The story is simple and the efforts to infuse this with "heartfelt moments" are just lengthy and tragic: In fact the whole middle part of the movie is more or less these slow and horribly boring heartfelt moments. The bare knuckle fighting that was advertised did not even try to be believable and in any case he constantly used brass knuckles.

The movie's alright. Nothing so special about it but also it's not bad either. Since it's not a blockbuster or whatever I didn't put too much expectation on it so I feel like it's a decent one to just casually watch. Of course you are not getting crazy deep thoughts out of the movie. It tells a story and that's it, which for me is easy to understand (I haven't read the book, though).

There was action and fighting which I think was good enough with some being really nice, still I do need a little bit more action. The emotions were there and I appreciate that they tried to establish something but for me it's quite a bit over the top as it seems there was only a way to show the emotional connection so it kinda gets repetitive over time. Apart from that, everything else was fine, the characters had their roles, the color and lightning in some scenes were good which pleased my eyes.

Aaron Eckhart did his job well as always. The child actor (Michael A. Waycaster) was pretty good.

Solid 6.5 for me but props to some really nice scenes I'll give it a 7.

So I see that my first review that I did of this rubbish movie got deleted. I wonder if this review will also be deleted.....

Most likely it was reported by the rubbish people who have given high ratings to this rubbish movie, the fools who have been involved in making this rubbish. So very pathetic of the filmmakers to take down my honest review.

Aaron Eckhart is a fun comedy actor, he has shown this countless times over the years. But that is not enough to be able to save this rubbish.

The movie is predictable, boring, the actors are talentless, the script is laughably bad.

I want to warn everyone not to watch this movie. Don't torture yourselves by wasting time on this useless movie.