Forced to Fight Blu-ray Review
Enter the Dragon; Bring the Family
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, December 17, 2012
Former kickboxing star Gary Daniels has an ideal face for the camera. Handsome, stoic and
slightly mysterious, Daniels doesn't display a wide range of emotion, but his demeanor suggests
that there's more going on below the surface. Entire screen careers have been built on the
curiosity provoked by such emotional icebergs, because they make otherwise two-dimensional
characters interesting to watch. In the first
Expendables, Daniels' bad guy, known only as "the
Brit", made a worthy addition to the league of villainy led by Eric Roberts simply because
Daniels suggested there was more to the character than just a bad guy, though exactly what was unclear.
In the mixed martial arts extravaganza
Forced to Fight, Daniels' stoic features serve him well as
a former fighter forced out of retirement and struggling with the better angels of his nature. As
his character agonizes at a crossroads between his responsibilities as a husband and father (and
brother) and the thrill and rewards of the ring, Daniels doesn't try to overact the internal tug-of-war, which an actor with more extensive resources
might have been tempted to do. He and co-writer/director Jonas Quastel save the battling for the elaborately choreographed fight scenes,
which are, after all, what viewers really came to see. The story itself, and the bruises on Daniels'
face, do the rest.
Image Entertainment is releasing
Forced to Fight directly to video, but the film is much better
than that treatment might suggest.
Forced to Fight was a joint Canadian-Romanian production
that failed to find theatrical distribution, probably because Daniels isn't a martial arts star at the
level of Jet Li or Jean-Claude Van Damme and because no one knows how to market "B"
pictures anymore unless they cost more than $100 million and feature massive effects.
Forced to
Fight is tidy, efficient and inexpensively made (although it doesn't look cheap). The film also
revives the martial arts tournament genre, which has been absent from the screen for some years.
Though most of
Forced to Fight was shot in Romania, the story is set in Brooklyn where an
illegal, anything-goes combat scene has moved underground, changing venues every few weeks
and streamed over the internet. The overlord of this empire is Danny G. (Peter Weller, in fine
form), who recruits the fighters, promotes the games, hosts the venue, provides the net servers,
makes the book and, most importantly, keeps the money no matter what. As far as Danny G. is
concerned, this is
his sport. So Danny doesn't take it kindly when, in the film's opening
sequence, a young fighter named Scotty Slavin (Arkie Reece) refuses to take a dive as instructed.
With predictable efficiency, Danny has the errant fighter "seen to" by his thugs.
Scotty is the younger brother of Shane Slavin (Daniels), a former legend in the ring who has left
that world and is trying to lead a normal life as the owner of a small auto repair shop with a wife,
Connie (Alexandra Weaver), and son, James (Corbin Thomas). Just before Danny G. catches up
with Scotty, he goes to see his older brother, where he announces that he's leaving for California,
apologizes for all the trouble he's caused and offers to pay back some of the money he's
borrowed from Shane over the years, which Shane refuses. Later, when Scotty winds up in the
hospital, all his money is gone.
Using Scotty's debts and threats of violence against Scotty and his family, Danny G. forces
Shane out of retirement, and Shane's return comprises the bulk of
Forced to Fight. What
distinguishes the film from other tournament pictures is the degree to which Daniels and Quastel
delineate Shane's inner battle. He isn't just doing "one last job" as a necessary evil, after which
he'll return to his former life without batting an eye. Shane is an addict re-entering a world from
which he only barely managed to extract himself the last time. As Shane acclimates himself to
the meaner, dirtier world that underground fighting has become since he left, we watch him get
hooked on the adrenaline and testosterone. As the competitive fire reignites, he begins to evolve
into someone his wife and son don't recognize and, indeed, are afraid of. Eventually he falls out
with Scotty as well. All of this suits Danny G. just fine. As Shane's old life falls away, Danny is
acquiring a new fighter for his stable.
Throughout his acting career, Peter Weller has often been cast in oddball roles, even in the early
phase when he usually played heroes like Robocop or Buckaroo Banzai. But in recent years,
when he's appeared as villains in
24 (season 5) or
Dexter, he's seemed to confirm what many
actors have said in interviews: that it's more
fun to play the bad guy. As Danny G., Weller seems
to relish every possible nostril flare, raised eyebrow and puff of cigar smoke. In the brief
interview in the disc's extras, he offers a sharp and insightful psychological portrait of the
character, but in the film he provides an infinite series of variations on Danny G.'s basic modus
operandi. This is a man who enjoys
owning people, and Weller etches an acid portrait of a
manipulative S.O.B.
Of course, the main attraction of
Forced to Fight is the bouts in the makeshift ring, which have
been choreographed by Daniels and stunt coordinator Claudiu-Cristian Prisecaru (who also plays
Shane's "handler"). Kinetic, brutal and as realistic as safety will allow, the sequences are a
melange of fighting styles, including the lowest form of street combat. If "fight club" had ever
been taken over and reorganized by the corporate elements it was founded to oppose, it might
have looked something like this. Director Quastel shoots these sequences with a camera circling
and dodging to get closer, like a member of the privileged live crowd angling for a better view of
the carnage. One of the most subversive elements of
Forced to Fight is that the very spectacle
that draws us in as viewers is also the cesspool from which we hope that Shane will ultimately
escape, as it threatens to destroy both him and his family—and Danny G. grins knowingly behind
the whole enterprise, watching the monitors as they reckon the odds.
