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Movie:		2.0
Picture:		3.0
Sound:		4.0
Extras:		3.0
Score:		3.0

Director(s):	Bill Corcoran
Writer(s):	Hector Echavarria & Eamon Glennon
Starring:	Hector Echavarria • Tanya Clarke • Nick Mancuso • Keith Jardine • Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson • Lara Daans • Cairo Noble
Genre:	Action • Martial Arts
Release Date:	December 01, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $17.99
Amazon:

I know that as a reviewer, I’m supposed to maintain some degree of objectivity and not bring my own prejudices into what I watch, but let’s be honest for a moment: there’s no way that you can watch an MMA film on purpose and not know that it’s going to suck more than a little. I mean, seriously. I like seeing guys pummel each other as much as the next guy, but this is the second one that I’ve watched (the first being Never Surrender), and the feeling that they had made the film as a kind of endurance test was just as strong with this film as it was with that one.

Reinero (Hector Echavarria) is a star in the world of cage fighting (a profession that allows him to live the lifestyle of a professional athlete, if this film is to be believed), living a happy and healthy existence with frequent thrust receiver Kira (Tanya Clarke, who I hope was told that she was signing on for something marginally pornographic). All of that is changed however, when Ivan (Nick Mancuso) bursts into his loft with his privately owned SWAT team and forcibly injects Kira with a disease that will kill her before too long if Reinero doesn’t do what he says. Pretty soon, he is trapped in Ivan’s underground fighting ring, where he is forced to fight with other MMA stars Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Rashad Evans, and Georges St. Pierre, so that people on the internet can gamble on them. Yup, that’s the plot of the movie. Just go with it.

To judge this movie based on any standards of plot, character or acting would be kind of beside the point (as well as a little unfair), so I’ll keep it as strictly within the realm of fighting as I can. The film still sucks, specifically because it refuses to acknowledge how any sort of character or, hell, even basic principles of cinematography might be used to make the fight even better. I know that the Hong Kong/Kung Fu films with names like Blood on the Eagle’s Claw and The Curse of the Smiling Tiger that we all love and defend (because they rule) weren’t masterpieces of thematic subtlety, but they understood one key thing that no MMA film seems to have figured out yet: unless you’re going to have an hour and a half of plotless wall-to-wall fighting (certainly a possibility), you have to at least enjoy spending time with the people punching each other into bloody pulps. The dialogue in any given Jackie Chan probably isn’t any better than what the Bards cooked up here, but it was all spoken (or dubbed) with a reasonable degree of aplomb that we could sit through the long, boring fightless scenes without actually changing the channel. MMA has not mastered this concept. Never Surrender starred Echavarria too, and he was just as wooden and unlikeable there as he is here, saying every line with the same kind of ‘look, it's me in this movie looking cool’ gravitas. The rest of the guys aren’t any better, densely populating Death Warrior’s world with thickly muscled guys who couldn’t sound more bored.

The most troubling aspect of Warrior is a framing device used by director Bill Corcoran: pulling out to a computer screen where the fight is displayed with graphics giving the name of the fighters and other glossy things, just like it would be in a damn television match. When we’re constantly cutting back to a gimmick that makes this whole thing feel more like a televised match, you have to ask yourself why they bothered making this movie in the first place.

Bonus Features

Behind the Scenes - A fairly brief making of documentary, which you’ll absolutely love if you like seeing scenes from the film juxtaposed with documentary footage of guys shooting that scene.

Rules of a Knife Fight - Some short footage that will presumably demonstrate to you how to survive a knife fight.

Interviews - Some quick time spent with Georges St. Pierre, Rashad Evans, and Keith Jardine.

Death Warrior Micro Video - For better or worse, several clips from the film edited together to the music of Lost Autumn.

Training in Hawaii with BJ Penn - More footage of dudes learning martial arts. Might have been interesting if they had demonstrated anything.

TapouT Previews

Death Warrior Trailer