This is a bold-looking stab at having Ultimate Fighting replace boxing as the acknowledged American blood sport of cinematic struggle:
It looks hopelessly overloaded with cheese, mostly of the single-slices-in-plastic variety, of course: the military themes, the mortgage troubles, the doubled-up family dramas, Jennifer Morrison in her panties at a moment of familial crisis. And it’s simultaneously an interesting step in the Americanization of Tom Hardy, happening at a rather convenient moment before he steps onto movie screens as Bane in the next Batman movie. But I think that overwroughtness is an attempt to yank a genre forward, past the slow-boil indie-cred building stage that movies like Redbelt earn for it. A risky move, for sure, but an intriguing one.
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