Review: Pit Fighter (2005)

Dominique Vandenberg plays an amnesiac pit fighter, who is managed by mafia-connected Steven Bauer. Vandenberg keeps having flashes of a woman (Stana Katic) whose identity he can’t yet place, but slowly it all starts to come back to him. Scott Adkins has a non-fighting role as a man from Vandenbeg’s past, whilst Stephen Graham plays a character connected to Katic.

 

An early collaboration between writer-director Jesse V. Johnson and martial arts actor Scott Adkins, this dreadful 2005 film is a long way from “Savage Dog”, “Accident Man”, and “Avengement”. Adkins was still in the early stages of his career and thus is barely an extra here in what may be the worst film he’s been involved in. Yes, worse than “Max Cloud”, “Black Mask 2”, “Dead Reckoning”, and “The Legend of Hercules”. It’s been poorly edited, it’s needlessly confusing and dreadfully boring. I wonder how Johnson looks back on this one because his films are usually competent at the very least, whereas the narrative here is anything but competently executed. It gets in its own way, and even the fights are boring and over-edited. Johnson seems to get everything wrong here.

 

Our lead actor is Belgian Dominique Vandenberg, who has a legit martial arts and military background. As an actor, he’s not bad but pretty flat and lacking in charisma. Low energy vibes for sure. He’s a brutal fighter but not in a terribly captivating way on screen. Veteran character actor Steven Bauer is much better, but not a miracle worker. He does deserve credit for approaching what is clearly junk with the same investment he would a loftier project. Adkins, who was pretty good two years earlier in “Special Forces” doesn’t get enough of a look in, and isn’t very good. Stephen Graham (another familiar face) is wasted, but an actor named Ric Sarabia is decent, if pretty hammy.

 

The film is full of awkward, goofy shit like the awful flashbacks with TV actress Stana Katic, and dopey arthouse touches like the Virgin Mary dreamily walking past during fights for goodness knows why. Oh, and annoyingly twitchy camerawork, just what you want in an action film, right?. Capped off by an incompetently staged finale where Vandenberg is outmanned and outgunned in a wide open space but barely gets a bullet or two hitting him until finally the baddies can somehow shoot straight again.

 

Watch one of the better Johnson-Adkins collaborations, this one’s the pits. Look, we all know I wasn’t gonna pass up that joke.

 

Rating: D-

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