Pit Fighter (2004)

Gripped by civil war and crime, San Cristobel de Las Casas is a hotbed of turmoil and unrest. The top betting sport is pit fighting, a bloody, ruthless and sometimes deadly game that matches man against man in a fight to submission. The local champion is a gringo known only as The Father – due to his stoic temperament and penchant for wearing black. For five years The Father has been competing, with no memory of anything prior. Events reunite The Father with Marianne. He painfully pieces the fractured memories of his life together through the shadowy characters who knew him in his past and realizes there is only one-way to win redemption, atoning for the sins of a life he doesn’t remember. The Father must destroy those who created him.

starts out like your average usa movie, but by the end, it's a real movie.

I gotta be honest, I should have given this a 4/5, but it a 3.5, and I had to go with the 3. Still, this movie is not a martial arts movie, except in the realism sense. It's sort of like the ufc style, but definitely still looks like movie martial arts. Better fight scenes than sy rocky, but won't live up to any of the good chinese martial artists out there.

Still a movie that is worth watching at least a few times. March 16, 2006

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might

PIT FIGHTER is a movie that lives up to it's title. Like ONG BAK and UNLEASHED, it emphasizes real martial arts combat with a hard edge. Given that it's a direct-to-DVD movie with a small ($500,000) budget, this is a great achievement indeed.
In PIT FIGHTER, Jack (Dominique Vandenberg)is a man with no past. For reasons he is unaware of, he has survived a near-fatal bullet to the brain, which has completely blasted his memory away with it, and leaving him stranded in a small town in Southern Mexico. With no money and no identity, Jack befriends Manolo (Steven Bauer, of SCARFACE) and soon discovers he is a martial arts expert, and gets involved in the sport of Pit Fighting, one of those absolutely-no-rules martial arts fight clubs, and after dominating as the reaigning champion for the last five years, he sees a woman he hasn't seen in five years. His past begins to return to him, and, after being baptized as a Catholic and trying to reconcile himself with God, he realizes, "I may not have been the best of men."

Belgian-born Dominique Vandenberg is no stranger to martial arts. A former legionairre, he has been training since the age of four, in everything from Muay Thai and Judo to Krav Maga and Kyokushinkai Karate. He is known for thraining Leonardo DiCaprio in knife-fighting for GANGS OF NEW YORK, but by far, hi most noted pre-PIT FIGHTER role was as the fighter who gets frozen by Sub-Zero in MORTAL KOMBAT.

Dom brings a suitably hard-edge to PIT FIGHTER. His kicking ability is fantastic, and the sight of his agile, quick hands in motion is nothing short of jaw-dropping. His many opponents range from challenging to push-overs. Dom's first match in th Pit along with his two matches against Andre 'Chyna' McCoy, who doubled for Lurence Fishburne in THE MTRIX, are the best.

If you like brutal but beautiful martial arts choreography, PIT FIGHTER is right up your alley. February 3, 2006

Crap Fighter

Being a big mixed martial arts fan, I was interested in 'Pit Fighter' when I saw it in the store. The write-up on the back sounded interesting and the blurb on the back stated that "the fight scenes are the stuff of legend". I should've known better. I knew it would be crap but I gave it a chance anyway. And do you know what it did? It sodomized me.

The story goes a little something like this: some random dude(played by Dominique Vandenberg, fresh off his fabulous role as a corpse in 'Gangs Of New York')who gets shot in the head. He wakes up, gets medical treatment from some outlaw doctor, and then becomes an underground pit fighter. Oh yeah, he's got amnesia and a lame tattoo("Marianne")on his chest. That's pretty much it.

'Pit Fighter' is pure excrement. The script is lame crap, the acting is pathetic crap, the fight scenes are crappity crap, the special effects are laughable crap...you get the idea. There's nothing well done here at all. And as for the fight scenes being "stuff of legend"...ha, my ass they are. They are the stuff of "completely forgettable, low budget straight-to-DVD cinema". And if you're going to make a film about fighting, you should get actors that look comfortable fighting. All of the scenes are just awkward, filled with quick cuts so that you never see a punch/kick land, and do that speed up/slow down thing a million times. Annoying and lame.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but half of the dialogue in the film is made up of "um"s and "uh"s while the actors try to remember their monosyllabic lines. Now, I realize that this is a low budget action flick and I don't expect Oscar-worthy performances but 'Pit Fighter' is just horrible. Not to mention, the plot is slow and meandering(absolutely nothing happens to move the plot along in the first half-hour or so of the film). And one of the funniest things in the flick is that it is set in Mexico, but about half the cast have Australian accents. Ha. Excrement.

Avoid this like naked pictures of your mother. October 30, 2005

Pit Fighter

The movie was alright, not great, I had lots of people watching this movie with me and same respond as me.

I t can be better. October 17, 2005

Rocking, a blitzing blasting, blood letting good time!

I really enjoyed this film on Spike TV, so I searched it out! Frankly the DVD is even better than the TV version, there is certainly a lot more violence in it, the eye popping out in the fight scene. A very brutal film, not for your grand mother, but I loved it. I am a true fan of Sam Peckinpah, too, so maybe it's just me.
There was definitly something about this story that worked very well. Give it a go. But be warned, it has a rough, edgy feel to it. Not your polished studio fare!! September 5, 2005

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