Unrivaled (2010)

Unrivaled (2010)

Directed by: Warren P. Sonoda

Starring: Hector Echavarria, Steven Yaffee, Nicholas Campbell

I don’t watch… whatever it is that this is based off of, so I don’t know what it’s called. It’s that boxing/kickboxing/hugging thing that I see on TVs at the bar when there aren’t any real sports on. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, that’s what this movie is, Rocky, but with that sport. I don’t think they even mentioned the name of it in the movie.

Unrivaled is about an amateur boxer (WHATEVER IT’S CALLED) who also does grunt work at a strip bar. His nerdy friend enters him in a contest for amateurs so they can fight a pro, and the strip club owner whom he falls in love with straightens out his arm, which was partly dislocated, so he can fight better. He ends up winning all the matches and… well, that’s an hour of film, basically.

What’s worse than the completely-missed-the-point high concept of Rocky in Thunderdome thing (Rocky worked because the main character WASN’T the nicest guy in the world who deserved to be treated great, and because the fighting was actually not the most important part of the film. Anyway), the worst part of Unrivaled was the music, by and far. The soundtrack consisted entirely of fucking awful pop rock/rap, and on top of that, the songs almost never actually matched up with the action taking place. During the final climactic fight, there are three songs with completely different tones to them playing, none of which ever match up with the emotional arc they were trying to get in the fight. It’s like the sound director just played songs in the background of scenes that didn’t have anybody talking just for the sake of filling up the quiet spaces. That’s fucking terrible.