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.

This thrilling movie deals with a tight-lipped hunk who is introduced to the world of underground street fierce brawling by a seasoned scam artist, who becomes his manager . In New York City, a young counterfeiter named Shawn McArthur (Channing Tatum) tries to come up with a way to get enough money to live . The desperate young knocks several robbers when they attempt to rob him some goods. After that he comes into contact with street-fight promoter , a hustler named Harvey (Terrence Howard). Shawn teams up with the organizer of no-holds-barred bare-knuckle fights that secretly entertain the wealthy across the streets and slums of N.Y.C. and links Shawn up with Martinez (Luis Guzman). Shawn is soon fighting various contenders -ranging from a Harlem bouncing to an Oriental fighter - earning money to help keep his new sweetheart (Zulay Enao) who comes to love him . Shawn decides that he has something worth brawling for and sets everything on the line to vanquish . Although Shawn only wants to bash opponents long enough to gain enough money to assist his girlfriend, he is reluctant to let tricks in combats on the fighting circuit .Every knock-out brings him closer to the existence he's always wished , but also carries him in a deadly cobweb he can't getaway.

The picture contains drama ,thrills , and lots of violent brawls plenty of punch , kicks, and knockouts. Acceptable performance from Channing Tatum as impulsive young becoming a professional street-fighter and battling a variety of contenders , plus Zulay Enao gives a surprisingly good acting as his gorgeous love interest and special mention to Terrence Howard as the sharpster who arranges his bare-knuckled bouts . The picture belongs to sub-genre about street combats as ¨Lionheart¨ with Jean Claude Van Damme and whose maxim representation turns out to be the classic ¨Hard times¨ by Walter Hill with Charles Bronson and James Coburn . It's a colorful but violent entertainment that results to be the second film of his director Dito Montiel. His first movie was the dramatic ¨Guide to recognizing the saints ¨and in preparation ¨The son of no one¨ also with Channing Tatum and Al Pacino . Rating : passable , only for those who like films in which fist-play are staged ad nauseam .

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.

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.

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.