Average Rating: 5/10
Reviews Counted: 125
Fresh: 50 | Rotten: 75
Though Fighting has a likable lead performer, and the fight scenes are impressive, the paper-thin plot ultimately unravels.
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Critic Reviews: 27
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 13
Though Fighting has a likable lead performer, and the fight scenes are impressive, the paper-thin plot ultimately unravels.
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Average Rating: 2.6/5
User Ratings: 746,852
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A small-town boy hustling his way through the big city forms an uneasy alliance with a scam artist who inducts him into the violent world of bare-knuckle brawling in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints writer/director Dito Montiel's unforgiving urban action film. Arriving in New York City with little more than the shirt on his back, Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum) makes ends meet by selling counterfeit goods on the street. But times are tough and money is short, and just as things are starting
Apr 24, 2009 Wide
Aug 25, 2009
$23.0M
Rogue Pictures
All Critics (127) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (50) | Rotten (78) | DVD (8)
The fights may not be very convincing, but the story's underdog structure is satisfying in a happy-cliché sort of way. Fighting is Rocky without the bombast, Fight Club without the daft metaphysical pretensions.
This is a story we've seen dozens of times before.
There's an effective, unstylized authenticity to those fights. A life or death mania, which enhanced the film's credibility.
Fighting arrives fully charged by the charisma of its star, Channing Tatum.
There's a better movie inside it struggling to get out.
By making good use of its New York setting, Montiel does bring a certain indie grit to the generic story.
Yes, both Channing Tatum and Zulay Henao... have careers for their looks alone, and they'd have better careers delivering pizza than delivering dialogue.
Channing Tatum (GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra) is crazy beautiful, and perfectly cast as a slow, troubled young man.
the protagonist happens to be played by an actor who looks more like a fashion model than tough street fighter
Street-fighting saga is stylish but cliched and violent.
Universal's transfer is great, but nothing about this release calls out for attention.
Fighting consistently feels like a patchwork of better movies without their excitement or rooting interest in character.
There's something interesting in this film and that's the reality it brings to its subject matter. Scenes seem real. And that's a lot to do with the performances. They're all terrific. But there's the reality of New York too, there's grit here.
Despite the formulaic script and cringe worthy moments, the performances from the leads and creation of the subculture are well executed by director Montiel.
The only thing you'll be 'fighting' is your lagging attention span.
Montiel and his collaborators can pat themselves on the back for elevating empty material just a bit, but this is disposable cinema, designed to hit and run after an opening weekend. [Blu-ray]
Entertaining and engaging, Fighting has action, romance and a buddy element in a tight, professional package
Fighting is a testosterone-driven movie full of blood, beautiful women, big muscles and enough plot to be a good movie.
All of this, however, is plainly just a veneer on a solidly generic punch-up movie, and it thus becomes a drag. A more cartoonish approach would probably have been more fun.
While everything is highly predictable, the film is well designed and bone-crushingly violent fights are ably staged in Brooklyn.
Quite how that will go down with his testosterone-fuelled, spotty audience, I have no idea.
The problem is that, even with some very strong acting, we're never quite convinced to believe either the relationships or situations.
The tell-it-as-it-is title hardly indicates anything out of the ordinary, but this bare-knuckle boxing flick is put together with more love than you'd expect.
Two gorgeous men with their tops off. What more could you ask for? There is also a really nice story and a genuinely great film. A must see!
June 23, 2011Super Reviewer
This movie was okay, I kinda liked it. The acting was just okay, and Channing Tatum is one of the great new rising stars. The concept was good, but the way they do it wasnt bad, but strange. Their were moments in the movie where Tatum would randomly run into aquantinces in the biggest city in America, WTF? In the
April 16, 2011
Super Reviewer
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