Embattled (2020) - Stephen Dorff, Darren Mann, Elizabeth Reaser, Donald Faison

[AlbertV]

The film has a Warrior vibe, but replace two brothers with an estranged father and son, the father being the arrogant world champion and his son, who thanks to his father ditching them, has to care for his mentally-disabled brother. When the son becomes a MMA fighter, he finally is given the opportunity to face his own father in the ring. Blood and Bone fight choreographer Fernando Chien choreographed the MMA fight scenes on this one. 

 

Edited July 3, 2021 by AlbertV

[Super Ninja]

Embattled is an MMA drama, with the emphasis on drama, so fans of mixed martial arts looking to get a healthy dose of octagon thrills will be left disappointed. In fact, just to make this clear, there are no more than three fights here, which is really not a lot for a movie close to two hours long, and to make it worse, one is really short and one is just plain bad.

With that being said, Embattled is actually a solid movie that should keep you engaged until the end credits role, despite the idea of a father and his son engaging in an MMA fight being of the kind that could make your eyes roll. Dorff is Cash "The Slayer" Boykins and Darren Mann is Jett Boykins, his son looking to succeed as an MMA fighter with the help of his father. 

Be warned, Embattled contains as much drama as your typical Oscar bait movie, and it pretty much has it all. Abusive father? Check. Single-mother barely making ends meet? Check. Divorced couple back and forth? Check. Teenager taking care of his younger, mentally-disabled brother? Check. Father-son issues? Check. War vet in a wheelchair trying to reanimate his love life? Yep, that as well. Add a couple of sexist/racist comments to give some flavour and you got yourself a script for Embattled. Only thing missing is another son realising he's not really into girls.

Stephen Dorff as the psycho dad, modeled after Conor McGregor and in good form here, would surely arrange a fight even sooner if that was the case. As it is, it took for his son to punch his face during a birthday party for him to sign a huge deal with his promotors, but only after the video of that event went viral.

On a good note, Embattled adds another layer to the story with its attempt to speak on the issue of MMA fighters being severely underpaid. It's a public secret, but most of the MMA movies were usually concerned with having one of the major UFC stars in its cast or becoming a feature lenght Tapout commercials, so this is a nice attempt to add some weight to the story. That is if drama wasn't heavy enough for ya. 

Action sure as hell ain't. I don't know what happened to Fernando Chien between Blood and Bone and Embattled, but his choreography here has miles to go before even becoming average. Out of the three fights in the movie, only one deserves to be called good, and that is Jett's first octagon fight. It's here where you need to look for your middle and heel hook kicks, shoulder lock and triangle chockes, though you'll see high kicks, arm bars and judo throws along the way.

So if you're looking for a good MMA movie, look elswhere. If you're looking for a good MMA based movie, you could do worse. 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Super Ninja