Circle of Pain

Just when you thought "Undisputed 3: Electric Boogie-woogie" set an impassable bar as this year's worst MMA/fight film, along comes the magnanimous "Circle of Pain". The dialogue and acting seems like something out of the Lifetime channel (or even the probably-defunct-but-I-won't-bother-to-check Oxygen network), but with random/bizarre, super contrived graphic sex scenes sprinkled throughout. Our hero, a down on his luck ex-fighter, has been out of the game for over five years. Under the coaching tutelage of fake Brett Favre, he decides to make a comeback to fight the champ in… two months?!? P90X, eat your heart out. Dean Cain mails it in at our hero's wheelchair bound roommate. The closest thing we have to a legit acting performance in this flick comes from Kimbo "don't call me a tomato can" Slice! The fight scenes could not be any more dull, and the movie lacks even a single frame of comic relief. This is a film completely lacking in any redeeming value, save as potential fodder for an MST3K revival.

Some major errors in this copycat plot. the biggest being the plaster cast on the guys broken right arm or is it left arm.. I guess they couldn't remember. This movie deserves a huge rant but at the same time does not deserve the effort, if a little more effort went into the movie then it would deserve more of a rant! Feel really sorry for dean Caine in this and although he does OK Every scene in this movie is a rip off of something better. Writers completely lacked imagination Could almost be in the comedy genre There are so many better things to do with 85 minutes of your life. This movie is not recommended and should be avoided. This is a Truly predictable and dire effort by all.

I was never expecting an epic movie prior to watching "Circle of Pain", just an average, simplistic yet entertaining action movie. However, this film does not prove solid enough to provide viewers with an entertaining movie experience.

Firstly, the acting is never anything above average and the fight scenes are poorly constructed, therefore the action sequences are never more than mildly entertaining. Furthermore, all of the characters are very forgettable so, as a viewer, I never really cared about the outcome of the film (despite of the fact I expected and received little more than a collaboration of tedious clichés that dictated the direction of the mundane plot).

In addition to this, the script is incredibly cheesy and destroys any kind of seriousness or tension within the movie; it is very difficult to take this movie seriously.

Overall, if you are a HUGE fan of MMA movies and can tolerate a trashy script and substandard acting, this unoriginal, basic fight film will not be the worst piece of cinema you've spent your time to view. If you did not fit this category... Look elsewhere, perhaps at something like "Never Back Down".

I'm not really much of a Mixed Martial Arts fan to tell the truth. I watch professional wrestling (a man deserves his guilty pleasures, okay?) and I had a passing interest in Mixed Martial Arts in my teen years, but that's it. So I'm not really aware of "Tapout" or whatever it is, other than the fact that 1.) I see guys wearing "Tapout"shirts in town (and I've seen them in Wal Mart) and 2.) That they've released several Straight to DVD movies via Lionsgate, those purveyors of bad exploitation trash on DVD. So It was only a matter of time until I watched one of these movies, and I decided to go with "Circle of Pain", which while better than other "Tapout Presents..." ventures, is still a terrible movie.

Dalton Hunt (Tony Schiena) is a retired fighter whose been living a quiet life. Thing is, Colin "The Brick" Wahle (Heath Herring) is about to beat his record. So thanks to his pal Wyatt (Dean "I was Superman and now I can't get a role worth a damn" Cain) that he put in a wheelchair and the villainous director of a MMA company named Victoria Rualan (Bai Ling) telling him he has to, Dalton must come out of retirement to battle Wahle.

One of the things that's really noteworthy about "Circle of Pain" (and other "Tapout Presents..." movies") is how cheap the whole thing looks. The production values aren't exactly shot on video bad, but they essentially resemble those of a soft core skin flick. Also notable is that like it's predecessors, the movie suddenly becomes something of a soft core flick, with sex scenes thrown in for no reason whatsoever other than to pad out time. Apart from that, little if anything stands out in this movie, which is amateurishly directed by Daniel Zirilli, features few if any invigorating fight or action scenes, and is guilty of false advertising (the movie advertises Kimbo Slice as the star, but he's only in the film for two scenes.) Also, the acting is (as expected) terrible. Look, people pay to watch these guys beat the tar out of each other, not for their acting skills (though Herring at least seems to be having fun.) Dean Cain (who must curse the name of Terri Hatcher every day of his life) in particular is bad, seeming to be bored and uninterested as if he's only doing this for the paycheck. Hell, the only reason this isn't getting a 0/10 is because of Bai Ling. An underrated actress (with credits including "The Crow", "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "The Beautiful Country"), she seems to know what kind of movie this is, and plays the villain to a hammy T, delivering the only fun performance in the movie.

As a whole, there is not reason whatsoever to watch "Circle of Pain", which doesn't feel like something made for MMA fans as much as it feels like a cheap cash grab. I do wish that Tapout and Lionsgate would stop releasing these movies, but it's obviously not going to happen anytime soon.

I was allowed to screen this, and I don't consider that a privilege.

This movie is as bad as fighting movies comes; yes, even worse than Dead or Alive.

Standard plot. A righteous hero with personal problems, who is forced to fight and must regain all his past skills by training and fighting scrubs before stepping into the ring against the evil guy at the end. Of course his trainers are his best friend and an old dude.

Horrible acting. The actors and lines are better in most soaps. It's hard to say if it's the script or the actors, since both is really really bad. Horrible writing combined with terrible actors doesn't exactly create Oscar winning dialog.

Towards the end, we get some soft-core pornography without any context at all. Normally a sex scene adds to the plot or story of the film or its characters. These just seem like they were forced in there because fans of action movies expect it or because the producers had to fill in some blank tape ("hey we got 10 minutes to fill, why don't you fool around a bit and we put it in somewhere?").

The fighting? I didn't care much for it, but then again, I'm not a martial arts fan. With characters this badly written and actors not doing a great job, I lost most interest in whoever would win the various fights, and a small bit of me hoped that they would all loose. That would at least give the movie a moral of fighting being uncool.

It gets two stars since I remember having seen a worse movie - I just can't remember which. As entertaining as getting drop kicked.