Forced to Fight

This will be a very simple and quaint review. The story, brother helps brother out of jam, been done to death before. It's a generic plot, poor lighting as in some scenes the lights literally blind you watching the movie. The editing is sluggish. The acting is mailed in. The highlight was Peter Weller playing a low down money hungry gangster. Fight sequences were ok, to me not great or well choreographed. I give it a 4 out of 10

I am not sure what to say about this film. I liked both Gary Daniels and Peter Weller in it, I thought the fight scenes were very well done and I was pretty entertained by it. However the film is bad on so many levels, the plot pretty standard fare, probably something you would have seen a lot in the 80s, Daniels has to fight to pay the debt his brother owes to a underground fight promoter played by Weller. The acting of Daniels' characters wife and child are largely cringe worthy especially the boy. The pacing is very off in the film, you know time has to be passing, but it doesn't feel that way. Daniels decent into his characters fighting addiction is almost so sudden as to be unbelievable as is his abusive way he handles his family after this occurs. Nothing about this part of the film feels genuine and is what really brings the film down. The nail in the coffin comes with when Weller kills the brother needlessly. It doesn't really follow, he has Daniels fighting for him, even got him to take dives. He took Weller's threats seriously, so the murder of the brother does nothing except give Daniels a reason to screw Weller royally which he does. There are other nitpicks here, the big bad fighter at the end isn't really set up well, you never really see him as much of threat and Daniels seems to have an easier time of finishing him then he did the previous fighter. The cop that is investigating the murder seems to have been pulled from the 70s, old style appearance, unkempt appearance, heavy NY accent and all. Then the low budget swat team seen at the end, all black ski mask wearing subjects with handcuffs visible to show they are cops. However even with all the flaws, I was still entertained and in the end that is all a film has to do.

There was a time when I could dial down my expectations and enjoy a direct-to-video action film for what it is. Perhaps those days are over, or maybe 'Forced to Fight' is simply a bad movie regardless of format. You don't watch a film like this expecting Academy Award caliber acting, but the performances here make those in your average Sy-Fy 'Sharktapus vs. Hammer Head Chiuaua' flicks look like Masterpiece Theater. They're so bad in fact that they make villain Peter Weller look like Olivier by comparison. And the script... let's forget about the script. The producers apparently did. Of course all of this could be forgiven if the most crucial element of a fight flick—the fighting—was even remotely exciting. Oh it's technically competent I suppose. These guys are all the real deal. But the choreography and staging is flat and repetitive. After about the fifth or sixth bout my eyes began glazing over and I seriously contemplated "tapping out" my self. 'Forced to Fight' is a bottom of the barrel waste of 100 minutes. Avoid at all costs.

I'm not going to write anything about the story, other reviewers have already done so. Only so much: yes, it's pretty basic, has been done before a million times BUT... I think in this one it's done comparatively well. As another reviewer wrote, the time which passes between scenes has not been worked out well and you wonder about the jumps in behavior and emotion. But the acting is much better than you would expect from such a movie and the actors can't be blamed for inconsistencies in the script and what the directer/producer did with it. Now, to those who wonder less about the story and more about the fighting: The choreography is done much better than in most 80s and 90s martial arts flicks. You also have a lot of grappling but not so much as to make it boring. I think it's a very entertaining mix of fancy moves and realistic MMA techniques with a stand up fighting to grappling ratio of roundabout 80/20%. If you are a fan of Gary Daniels anyways you gonna LOVE this one :).