Ringo Duran (played by Argentinean kick boxer Hector Echavarria) is an undiscovered fighter whose friend secretly enters him into a Maximum Cage Warrior League competition. The competition involves taking on the best cage fighters in the USA in order to win the ultimate title. Ringo is initially reluctant, but when he finds out that the prize is $100,000, he decides to give it his best shot.
The hysterical, MTV-informed visuals ensure that you feel like you’re watching one long advert; an appropriate aesthetic given the film’s complete lack of emotional and thematic depth. Raging Bull this ain’t. The soundtrack, too, bludgeoningly signals every change in dramatic tone by switching between hilarious rap-metal (for the fight scenes) to mournful acoustic soft-rock (for the brief ‘reflective’ scenes outside the cage).
What makes Unrivaled slightly different from the mountain of films that follow exactly the same template is that its sense of humour isn’t entirely unintentional. There are plenty of jokes, the tone is never deadly serious; and in fact there’s a case to be made for the whole film to be viewed as a full-on self-parodic exercise that mocks the conventions of the genre even as it partakes in them.
After all, cliché piles upon cliché, but the filmmakers seem aware of this. Where does Ringo work when he isn’t fighting? In a strip club, of course. Revelling in sordid excess, the film cuts repeatedly between shots of tequila being poured, naked women gyrating against poles and thuggish men giving each other menacing looks. At one point, the film brilliantly segues between two unrelated, non-strip-club scenes simply by fading into and out of a shot of a random exotic dancer writhing about in an unidentified bedroom – surely an acknowledgement of the film’s meaninglessness, superficiality and joyful abandon?
Moreover, each character comes across as a caricature of the archetypal fight movie cast member: there’s the grizzled coach, the devoted girlfriend, the friend who never stops believing, and, of course, the underdog who might just carry off the title. There’s even a subplot involving a gangster – whose shtick is that he’s always sipping on a glass of red wine – to whom Ringo owes $20,000. But the script lends each character a touch of knowing absurdity that saves the film from becoming mind-numbing as it ticks all the narrative boxes.
Of course, it could be that I’m crediting this film with more self-awareness than it actually possesses. But it’s probably fair to say that no matter how it’s viewed, it will provide a fair share of laughs and easy, undemanding excitement. Good, dumb fun.
Overall Verdict: It’s about as sophisticated as a Pot Noodle, but there’s a similar amount of guilty pleasure to be had from it.
Special Features:
None
Reviewer: Tom René