About eight years ago, the first of the Undisputed series was released to a few theaters. It starred Wesley Snipes, Ving Rhames and Peter Falk among others. Despite the moderate star power, it didn’t do very well in the box office. Judging from the relative success of Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, which I have read is more similar to Undisputed III: Redemption, the first Undisputed only scratched the surface of what appeals to its desired fan base. By this third installment in the trilogy, they have done a much, much better job at hitting the proverbial target, and causing the target to spew its bloody mouth guard clear out of the ring. In slow-mo.
To bring you up to speed: there is an organized fighting circuit among maximum-security prisons around the world where a select group of high-roller, mob-type wardens take their best prisoner/fighter, and enter him into the ultimate prison-fighting tournament: the Prison Spetz Competition. The PSC tournament is held in a grimy, rusted prison in the Republic of Georgia, very close to home for Uri Boyka, who hails from a prison in Russia.
Boyka is no stranger to organized fighting. In fact, he was a major player in Undisputed II, and in the end of that film, had his right leg snapped in two during a match. We are treated to a delightful flashback of this in order to explain his limp. On the wall in Boyka’s murky cell is a Christian cross, and out from his desk he removes a Bible. At one point he confides in another prisoner that he believes God has given him a gift of being the ultimate, perfect fighting machine. I’ll ask the obvious question: Boyka, have you read the Bible before? I’m not a theologist, but I’m pretty sure Jesus never preached anything about roundhouse kicking people.
But whatever. This film is an excuse for two jacked-up guys to get in a ring surrounded by a cheering crowd of imprisoned fans and beat the tar out of each other. There is a pretty overused plot of the tournaments organizers fixing the match, etc. As much as the ending includes a decent-but-predictable payoff to that plot, there could have been less of it, and more of the skull-bashing.
Some of the acrobatics and strength these actors demonstrate, all that appears without the help of wires or stunt doubles, are remarkable. The choreographers went balls-out with this one. And when you have Scott Adkins, who plays Boyka, a guy who looks to be about 200 lbs. of solid muscle, jumping around and doing flips like a crack-addicted spider-monkey, who could blame them? MMA and UFC fans are going to be high-fivin’ and chest-bumpin’ all night long when they see this movie.
The fight scenes are highly stylized, which only helped the fighters look more impressive. Lots of the 300-style speed-up-slow-down is used to a good effect, letting the audience take in whatever action is taking place in the ring. The fighters move quickly enough in real time, so when one flies up in the air doing some sort of insane move, we can see it. It is overused though, during non-fighting scenes, and about every twelve seconds, a weird whip-zoom-pan-flash cut is used during regular bouts of dialogue and scenes. The director should have played this down quite a lot; I can imagine anyone prone to motion-sickness getting very annoyed.
Also, Boyka himself is pretty one-dimensional. The only things we really know about him are that he 1) is a fighter and 2) believes in God because God wants him to be a fighter. So he fights, that’s about it. He is a boring character. Also, he’s in prison for murder, so it’s not like audiences will innately care for him, or any of the characters for that matter, because, ya know, they’re all murderers.
But this movie isn’t for people who care about that kind of narrative nonsense. People who dig films where fighting is the focus of the film, like Bloodsport or Ong-Bak, will have fun with this one.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
No extras, which is a pretty big bummer. I bet some behind-the-scenes looks at this would have been fun. It's not a good idea to disappoint a person who just watched a movie about fighting. I got so angry I did six crunches then sucker punched my pillow right in the kisser!
"Undisputed III: Redemption" is on sale June 1, 2010 and is rated R. Action, Martial-Arts. Written by David N. White. Starring Marko Zaror, Scott Adkins, Mykel Shannon Jenkins, Mark Ivanir, Hristo Shopov.
