MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE BINGO

Better late than never, I suppose. Sometimes it can't be helped. Not like I haven't written my fair share of reviews over the past month. Even recorded an audio review for the new "Turkish Rambo" DVD release that you can listen to by CLICKING HERE. Wanted to have a review of OBSESSED - a real howler - but knew I wasn't going to have it done in time. Then I realized it was looking like I wasn't going to have anything done in time. I knew ahead of time that this might happen so I kept a few reviews from the past few weeks on stand-by in case I had to just slap a couple together and call it a Foyeurism. For all I know this could be the worst Foyeurism ever. Definitely the latest in a long time. On the plus side, the extreme lateness of this month's Foyeurism means you'll have a shorter wait until next month's Foyeurism. Unless that one's late too. Which is entirely possible at this point. So, yeah - better late than never I suppose.

 

THE LATE SHOW

 

Alternate title: DRAGON BALL F

The only saving grace of DRAGONBALL: EVOLUTION is that it's fast-paced and clocks in a merciful 80-minutes in length. In those 80-minutes the filmmakers attempted to cram about 30-episodes worth of plots, subplots, character development, relationships, backstories, and mythology, while still finding time for the action scenes. Imagine if they tried to cram the entire LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy into one single hour-and-twenty-minute motion picture. Nothing makes sense. Nothing adds up. Nothing is properly developed. Everything feels rushed. Lightweight kiddy rubbish as poorly written as it is acted. More forgettable than deplorable. The perfect movie for people that complained about SUPER MARIO BROTHERS not having enough kung fu.

The producers also made the unfortunate decision to set this live-action adaptation of the popular animated series (of which I've seen maybe half an episode in my whole life) in something vaguely resembling a real world setting. At least as real world a setting as a high tech society with flying cars, transforming four-wheelers that can spawn from pellets from your pocket, view screen pay phones, cityscapes that look like downtown Tokyo on neon steroids, and - my favorite - high school lockers that require swipe cards to open. This is Disney Channel cyberpunk.

By diversifying the cast to include Caucasians we end up with a white leading actor playing a character named Goku. To give you an idea how poorly written this film is, upon talking to his love interest, Chi Chi, he'll comment on what a strange name Chi Chi is. Hello? You're a white guy named Goku; you really think you're in a position to question the oddity of another human being's first name? Even Hollywood celebs don't give their kids names like that of an Ultraman monster.

The young actor badly portraying Goku is Justin Chatwin, best known as the annoying teenage son of Tom Cruise in WAR OF THE WORLDS that somehow turned up alive at the end of the movie to the great disgust of audiences everywhere. Chatwin reminded me here of Ted Jan Roberts if someone injected a bit of Christian Slater's smarminess into him. Is Goku some ancient word that means "irritating twerp"?

Goku is one of those teenagers of destiny; his Obi Wan-ish Chinese grandfather endows him with martial arts skills and talk of how all will be revealed on his 18th birthday. But first, he has to deal with some random high school bullies in order to win the heart of the girl who will become a recurring character throughout the film without actually becoming an active participant in any of the events.

You know your movie is convoluted when it is written to be simplistic childish nonsense and still manages to be perplexing to this degree. The first thing we're told at the outset is "The first rule is that there are no rules." I still don't understand what that meant in the context of the movie itself; it seems to me this was more a mission statement as to what mentality the movie was operating under. People can defy gravity and shoot lasers out their hands, a lone extraterrestrial schemes to destroy the planet for no reason in particular, martial arts tournaments break out at a moment's notice, mysticism, super science, shapeshifting, werewolves, random eclipses, and Ernie Hudson as a Buddhist monk? The hell?

An evil alien attempted to destroy Earth 2,000 years ago. A group of warrior monks saved the world by conjuring up seven dragonballs that look like translucent bocce balls numbered with glowing stars floating around inside them; when all seven are gathered together an escapee from DRAGON WARS will appear to grant one wish and, apparently, they wished him into the center of the earth. I fully understood this much only because the movie explained it in detail twice.

"In detail" may not be the correct wording here. How this evil alien escaped his center earthly prison is anyone's guess since even he never bothers to explain it. This movie doesn't have time for how's. Every now and then it'll stop long enough to attempt a few whys and maybe even a when or two. But how's? There's no interest in how's outside of how they choreograph the fight scenes or how much money they have available for the chintzy computer effects work.

Once the movie finishes cramming the Spider-Man version of NEVER BACK DOWN into the opening 15-minutes, the remainder of the film is a quest for the seven dragonballs in order to save the world from an evil alien before the big eclipse in three days. Off they go: Goku, a cute Asian love interest who secretly trains in the martial arts, a Korean guy channeling Spiccoli from FAST TIMES AT RIDEMONT HIGH, Emmy Rossum as a Nu Wave-haired corporate gunslinger, and Chow Yun Fat as a career low.

Remember when Chow Yun Fat was the coolest man on the planet? Seems like it was only 15-years ago. Now here he is accepting Jackie Chan's table scraps and it's depressing as hell to watch him ham it up badly as a bumbling kung fu wise man. If ever there was a role that seemed tailor made for Jackie Chan, this was it and probably would have if Chan hadn't already played almost this exact same role last year in THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. But to see Chow Yun Fat reduced to this - what happened? Damn you, REPLACEMENT KILLERS! Damn you, THE CORRUPTOR! Damn you, BULLETPROOF MONK.

And while I'm at it, damn you Stephen Chow for producing this crap.

They're after these dragonballs so that when they collect them all Puff-Man-Chu, the Chinese Wishing Dragon, will appear from whatever MSG-loving dimension will appear to grant a single wish that I assume will once again be to wish this evil alien back to the center of the earth. Except when they finally do collect the dragonballs, by that time Goku will have already highbeamed the bad guy into a coma and instead uses the wish to try and resurrect Chow Yun Fat's career. So really, when it's all said and done, the quest for the dragonballs is a moot effort from the get-go.

Here's a wacky idea: instead of putting so much effort into finding seven dragonballs why not focus on finding just one genie lamp instead. That way you can get three wishes instead of one. That way Goku can wish the villain into a cornfield, wish Chow Yun Fat's career back to life, and then save the last wish to get a billion dollars or something that'll really impress Chi Chi.

Also questing for dragonballs that are surprisingly easy to locate given how allegedly impossible they are to locate is that evil alien - an evil alien named Piccolo, appropriately played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's James Marsters given this alien looks like a green version of "The Master" from the first season of that series. An evil alien bent on destroying our planet named Piccolo may work in a cartoon but in a live-action - even one aimed at kids - the name Piccolo does not inspire menace in the slightest. Try saying it out loud in a sentence that denotes a threat to your existence.

"Run for your lives; here comes Piccolo!"
"Oh my god! It's Piccolo!"
"Please, Piccolo, don't hurt me!"

Just doesn't work. Piccolo and Count Dooku need to form a support group for sci-fi fantasy supervillains with less-than-imposing names.

Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble were befriended by a green alien named The Great Kazoo. The fact that he was friendly and performed finger-snappin' magic was not the only reason these primitive cavemen chose not to fear him.

A pity Piccolo's henchwoman and (eventual) henchwerewolf weren't named Harpsichord and Glockenspiel, at least then there'd be a theme going.

Why was that Chinese woman helping Piccolo? What is her motivation for assisting an alien bent on destroying her world? What's in it for her? Piccolo is a green extraterrestrial. That henchwoman was a very human gun-toting Chinese henchwoman leftover from a Corey Yuen film. Like it matters.

Presumably Piccolo wants the dragonballs not so much for apocalyptic wish granting so much as - I don't know. He plans to use them for something bad. The destruction of earth, preferably. Why exactly is anyone's guess. Last time he tried to conquer it. This time he wants to destroy it. No explanation where he plans to go once he has destroyed this world he's standing on. One generally doesn't think straight when they're out for revenge. So vengeful is Piccolo he lets his human henchwoman assisting him for reasons unknown do all his legwork except for that one early scene where he unveils his Extreme Makeover: Sith Edition death grip on an old man's house.

Yes, another sign your movie sucks is when your whole movie is built around defeating an world-destroying villain that just stands around looking like a human cucumber for 95% of the film. I kept waiting for someone to yell, "Hurry! We have to stop Piccolo before he actually tries to do something, anything, aside from standing around looking like the lovechild of Nosferatu and Shrek."

Then, after all this sound and fury signifying nothing, they actually have the nerve to tease audiences with a set-up for a sequel, assuming anyone watching even bothers to stick around during the end credits. And they do so in the lamest way imaginable; a peasant Asian woman brings nourishment to a person in a bed; the covers pull back and Piccolo rolls over alive and well. How seriously lame is that? Why not go for the full "Dallas" by having Goku awaken from bed only to find Piccolo in his shower revealing the whole movie was a dream. Or was that what they were going for with that final scene; the whole film was just Piccolo having a bad nightmare? I bet most DRAGONBALL fans wish the bastardization that was DRAGONBALL: EVOLUTION was just a bad dream.

In conclusion, I'd like to apologize to the kung fu kangaroo people of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE for any disparaging remarks I may have made over the years about them or their movie.

Coming soon to The Asylum's office: THE LITIGATORS

THE TERMINATORS is like a Frankenstein mockbuster that's been assembled from concepts, plot points, dialogue, visuals, and designs blatantly stolen from a variety of movies and television shows most egregiously and obviously the TERMINATOR movies, so much so it's amazing to think they actually managed to get this film out on the market without being slapped with a massive lawsuit. A computerized military defense system meant to protect us instead turns on us, nukes several major cities, sends human-looking cyborgs to exterminate the rest of us, and the movie is called The TERMINATORS? How did The Asylum not get sued into oblivion for this?

But the "sampling" - as they call it in the music industry - only begins with TERMINATOR. ALIENS, "Battlestar Galactica", STAR WARS, BLADE RUNNER, and "V" are all invoked in some way or another. A circular space station straight out of 2001 with a tractor beam that can suck vessels into its docking bay a la Star Wars; an outer space dogfight that also evokes memories the original STAR WARS. Those space transport shuttles bear more than a passing resemblance to the spaceships from "Space: 1999". A member of a team of space mercenaries is named "Hicks". When in doubt, open the bay doors and suck the thing trying to kill you out in the vastness of space. And this is only the stuff I personally recognized. The shameless highway robbery of various film and TV properties ranges from jaw-dropping to damn near inspiring.

Even video games get a nod. The cyborgs make pinball machine noises when bullets hit their metal exoskeleton. The laser fire and sound effects during that space dogfight are exactly like that of an early Eighties arcade game right down to laser cannon fire in the form of little triangles zooming across the screen.

Most amazing is that despite all of the blatant thievery and the absolute mess that is the barely lucid storyline, on its own terms, THE TERMINATORS actually works. More entertaining than it has any right to be - not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly livelier than quite a few other Terminator copycats that have come along. If nothing else, it isn't a total borefest. Given Asylum standards, that alone puts it in the win column.

The unsung hero of THE TERMINATORS is without a doubt director Xavier S. Puslowski and his ability to keep this mindless hodgepodge moving along at a brisk pace. When the events of an Asylum film reach the woods, that's when I usually start reaching for my remote; because if there's one thing I've learned from my years watching Asylum mockbusters, when you start seeing trees in an Asylum production you know the movie is about to get very bad and very dull. But this time, even as the momentary detour into the timber slogs a bit, Puslowski gets us through it rather quickly and relatively painlessly. For that alone the man deserves an Oscar.

Confusion from the get-go: is THE TERMINATORS set in the near future or an alternate universe with giant space stations, a military that has been replaced with an army of flesh-covered cyborgs referred to as TR (An abbreviation for "Terminator", a word never uttered for obvious legal reasons, or TR could be short for "Total Rip-off"), and high tech corporations that have virtual rooms with holographic view screens and private space mercenary security forces orbiting the planet? After the opening ten minutes that just plops us down into this confusing world, the story moves to a small town on the outskirts of Los Angeles that isn't anywhere near as space age as everything we've just seen but when these average citizens talk they've clearly heard of these TRs and casually speak of cyborgs as everyday appliances.

The TRs declare war on the human race for reasons that really never matter much. They did it in THE TERMINATOR; that’s all that matters.

The TRs' questionable attack plan is to prowl the streets shooting random citizens with their handguns or manually mauling them to death with their bare hands - the funniest scene of the film has a TR in the background continuously punching a guy non-stop in the face long past the point of having killed this man as a second TR casually walks past. Given the rate at which they were eliminating people, I'd reckon the TRs wouldn't successfully wipeout the human race for 3-5 years.

Ah, but the TRs have also taken to nuking major cities. We know this because the radio tells us so. There is a lone scene where citizens in that small countryside community witness L.A. getting nuked. Only problem is the f/x guys opted for a tiny explosion that from a distance looked more like a missile struck a random building rather than a full blown mushroom cloud city nuking. The planes hitting the Towers on 9/11 generated more smoke than the supposed nuclear annihilation of Los Angeles here.

The TRs appear in the form of muscular actor Paul Logan and his black tank from hell; surprisingly inventive camerawork and visual effects allow multiple versions of Logan to be shown attacking on the screen at the same time. If the Schwarzenegger School of Muscled-Up Soulless Automaton Assassin Acting Techniques existed Mr. Logan would have graduated valedictorian of his class. He has that cyborg killing machine swagger down to a t(r) and is a major reason the film succeeds in spite of itself.

On the other hand, when the best character and performance in a movies comes from the guy playing the non-speaking, blank-faced save for the occasional angry scowl, emotionless, mechanical manslayer...

Soap opera star A Martinez is the small town sheriff leading a small band of fellow citizens trying to survive the TRs rampage. Their evacuation will soon lead them to cross paths with "Party of 5"'s Jeremy London and his EMP gun, the only weapon capable of disabling a TR.

Given the cryptic statements London repeatedly makes I was absolutely positive it was going to be revealed that his character was from the future sent back in time to help stop the TR uprising. To the credit of writer and Asylum executive producer David Latt he chose not to further purloin TERMINATOR in this instance. Though I suspect he only did so because if he'd lifted yet another pertinent plot point from The Terminator movies with that character it would have made it much harder to work in an opportunity to pilfer "Battlestar Galactica". The difficult creative choices Mr. Latt must have had to make when cobbling this screenplay together.

The finale has the remaining survivors rocketing up to the TR space station in hopes of saving the human race from robotic extermination by flipping the off-switch and I am not kidding you when I tell you there is an actual on/off switch labeled "TR on/off" to be flipped. That's when you know you're watching a very "special" movie.

The sequel you didn't ask for to the movie you didn't like

The worst thing about a movie like INTO THE BLUE 2: THE REEF is that it makes me realize how much better the first INTO THE BLUE was and that is not something I want to do because I thought the original was pretty crummy too. Not even having a camera fixated so tightly on Jessica Alba's bikini clad ass could save INTO THE BLUE from being a rather lame film that tried to skirt by almost entirely on the pulchritude of its actors and scenery. This cheaper DVD retread follows more or less the same formula and plot mechanics as its predecessor, only this time neither the people nor scenery are quite as pretty and everything has the stink of a hastily produced made-for-Spike TV remake of the original.

INTO THE BLUE 2: THE REEF is such an unnecessary sequel that even the screenwriter appeared to be fully aware that there was no justification for its existence. An enormous chunk of the movie's running time focuses on elements that have absolutely nothing to do with the central storyline - what little there is. The first hour is chock full of characters frolicking on the beach, swimming in the surf, lounging on boats, dancing in clubs, competing in beach volleyball tournaments, attending wet t-shirt contests, and scuba diving - lots and lots of scuba diving. Half of this movie left me feeling like I was watching a particularly lousy episode of E!'s "Wild On" program. Where's Jules Asner when you need her?

Even then there’s extra emphasis on the love lives of minor supporting characters, as if we have any possible reason to care about any of these shallow human beings in the first place.

One such relationship subplot involves a shrewish girlfriend portrayed by Audrina Partridge of that MTV series "The Hills" (I'm on "Team Never Seen A Single Episode Of This Crap"; would have a t-shirt made but I don't think I can fit all that font on the front). Much has been made of her movie debut here as if she were actually a co-star when in fact she has all of about three minutes of screen time. That's still more than sufficient time to showcase how much of an actress she is not.

Jessica Alba's bikini and Paul Walker's washboard abs have been replaced by a pretty bland in more ways than one couple played by Laura Vandervoot and Chris Carmack. Attractive and okay actors, yet still less charismatic than Alba and Walker, which is really saying something.

They're two beautiful people in love running a charter boat/scuba diving business in Hawaii. Her repeatedly telling him how perfectly happy she is with their life keeps falling on his deaf ears as he constantly obsesses about finding this sunken treasure ship that would lead them to a better, more luxurious life than the one they’re living. Not only is this a carbon copy of Paul Walker's character in the previous incarnation, this new guy complains about their living conditions even as their living conditions are better than that of their screen predecessors and last time I checked, living in Hawaii cost a lot more than living in the Caribbean. In this day and age, does anyone involved with the making of this movie honestly believe average Joe’s watching these better looking than them people living more exotic lives are going to empathize with these characters whining about not being rich enough?

They're hired by a mysterious wealthy couple claiming to be in search of that very same undersea treasure ship. As with the first film, they have sinister ulterior motives. Nothing that occurs involving any of this makes for compelling viewing in the slightest, not even when such nonsense as stolen Saddam Hussein blood money and the discovery of an artifact legend claims contained a piece of the cross Jesus was crucified on gets introduced to the mix. Just a whole lot of scuba diving, underwater salvaging, cramped room hostage situations and face-offs, and Laura Vandervoot doing her best RUN, LOLA, RUN impression down a dock in a hospital gown. So lacking any amount of frisson you begin to understand why the writer seemed more interested in scenes removed from this plotline. The lackluster direction would seem to indicate that director Stephen Herek (CRITTERS, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, THE MIGHTY DUCKS) wasn’t too interested in any of it either.

It's one thing for Hollywood to keep cranking out these name-only DVD sequels to movies that in no way demanded sequalization; it's another thing for these producers to clearly show they had zero interest in the movie they've made outside of making a quick buck off the perceived name value of the original film.

They're even marketing the DVD promising an "unrated" cut. Why? For three scenes showing us boobs? Cut out those gratuitous moments of toplessness and INTO THE BLUE 2: THE REEF is barely worthy of a PG-13. Kind of devaluing the whole "unrated" label there, aren't we?

So, anyway, there went another 90-minutes of my life I'll never get back.

The only way to never surrender is to never... Uh... Wrong movie.

In an age when the sport of mixed martial arts is rapidly gaining mainstream acceptance while still struggling to shake detractors that continue to label it as nothing more than human cockfighting I don't know if it should be considered amusing or offensive that movies like NEVER SURRENDER that further perpetuate the most negative stereotypes about the sport continue to get made. Even more amazing is that nobody in charge of the UFC objected to having some of their top talent appear in such a sleazy film even if their roles amounted to little more than brief cameos. Quentin "Rampage" Jackson, Georges St-Pierre, BJ Penn, Anderson Silva, Heath Herring: their names are being used to market this film; Quentin "Rampage" Jackson is the primary image on the DVD menu screen.

Quentin Jackson makes his appearance shortly after the opening credits just long enough to crack some gay jokes with the film's star and take part in a parking lot brawl with a few angry bar patrons. Channeling the essence of vintage Mr. T; Jackson's entire appearance plays like his audition reel for that A-TEAM movie role he lost out on.

Georges St.-Pierre shows off his acting muscles by silently making himself a sandwich and sitting comfortably shirtless on a sofa watching a TV story about the actual star of the film during the opening credits. A bit later he'll put his shirt on in preparation of a very brief scuffle with a security guard that gets between him and his opportunity to exchange a few lines of dialogue with the star.

Anderson Silva arrives during the climax as a non-speaking henchman nicknamed "Spider" that our star has to fight his way past in order to finally get his hands on the main villain.

BJ Penn also gets in on that parking lot brawl and appears again towards the end to assist the star in another brief street brawl. If there are any filmmakers out there considering casting BJ Penn in a movie in a role that requires him to recite scripted dialogue, please don't. Just don't. With what few lines he's given, Penn still succeeds in giving the worst performance in a motion picture that already boasts universally terrible acting all around.

I fully realize nobody in their right mind watches a movie like this expecting good acting but - my god. The bulk of cast is comprised of mixed martial artists with no acting skills and actors with thick accents for whom English did not appear to be their first language. Even the American actor playing the villain speaks with a stilted Russian accent. We're talking about a movie where Heath Herring turns in the best, most charismatic performance and, mind you, he isn't all that good.

Herring is the only real-life fighter with a role that actually qualifies as a role. He's been cast as a doomed fighter brought in for the dual purpose role of training partner and instant new best friend of the main character. I say "doomed" because we all know what inevitably happens to the best friends in movies of this sort. The bad guy has to make an example out of somebody to set up the final showdown and BFFs in BLOODSPORT-style martial arts movies have the life expectancy of Dirty Harry's partners.

The true star of NEVER SURRENDER is former kickboxing champ Hector Echavarria as Argentinean MMA world champion Diego Carter. While I've no doubt in my mind that Echavarria could kick my head clean off my shoulders if he so chose to do so, the guy is still pushing 40, neither the best looking nor most physically imposing martial arts movie star, and his emotion inhibiting heavy accent makes him sound like a Latino Santino Marella. Kind of hard to take an action hero seriously when he's calling the bad guy a "poosy".

Sometimes you grab a still from a movie and it ends up looking far dirtier than intended

Echavarria is also the co-producer, co-writer, and director. So the middle-aged co-producer, co-writer, director of a movie casts himself as a tough talking, bad ass, MMA champion that every fighter idolizes, every child worships, every beautiful woman wants to sleep with, and can kickbox the likes of Anderson Silva to death with relative ease. I believe in the world of professional wrestling this guy would be referred to as a money mark.

I will say this for Echavarria; I don't know what it was about him that made me think this - possibly because of the sinister gleam in his eyes when he'd put on his intensely squinting fighting face, but I honestly believe the guy would be perfect for a starring role in a Central American Dracula flick. Make him a kickboxing Dracula and better believe I'll be first in line to buy a ticket to that.

Despite a heck of an audition, Echavarria still lost out on the role of Mr. Spock

NEVER SURRENDER is another one of those movies about fighters taking part in a high stakes underground no-holds-barred MMA tournament the super rich bet on for kicks. If there's one thing movies like this have taught me it's that watching people fight to the death is the sport of kings amongst the super wealthy; hunting less fortunate people for sport runs a close second. This secret internet tournament entices fighters with extra incentives that the Dana White's of the world can never top: higher paychecks and the winner earns the right to sleep with the loser's valet.

Yep, NEVER SURRENDER gives us that softcore porn twist martial arts movies so often overlook. And I bet you'll never guess who the lucky guy is getting faux humped by hot naked women in every single one of those sex scenes.

One can understand why Diego might find this more appealing than the legitimate MMA organization he fights for when you see him posing with his championship title belt: it reads "GLADIATOR CHALLENGE" in big letters and what is supposed to be a silhouette of a gladiator standing amid two Roman columns looks more like a hastily scribbled pencil drawing of DC Comic's Martian Manhunter bookend by garbage cans.

I think my M.U.S.C.L.E. figures I had as a kid came with the same title belt

Diego is lured into this world by Sandra, a buxom blonde Russian hooker he spots at a Vegas nightclub. Diego's chick magnetism puts CM Punk's to shame; before he can leave with the Russian blonde he first had to politely blow off the 20-year old brunette who had just walked over, sat on his lap, and all but asked him to hump her right there in the middle of the club.

Sandra takes Diego to the location where one of these illegal internet fights is behind held and introduces him to Seifer, the Russian fighter-organizer of the tournament, played by Patrick Kilpatrick, a reliable actor who has practically made a career playing bad guys with icy stares in action movies such as REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS and DEATH WARRANT. Here Kilpatrick has the physical appearance of Randy Couture plus about 15-years of hard living and sports an oddly shaped soul patch that looked to me like some sort of hairy fungus had begun spreading across his lower lip. Seifer will not go down as one of Kilpatrick's better villainous outings.

It takes almost no convincing whatsoever for Diego to not only enter the cage that evening, but to essentially agree to throwaway his professional fighting career and disappear from public life in order to participate in this illegal underground fighting tournament. Someone even asks shortly thereafter if he is at all worried that if anyone finds out he is involved in this stuff it could destroy his mainstream career to which Diego quickly replies with an emphatic "I don't care." Why should he? He's making higher bucks and getting cheaper fucks. That's all MMA fighters care about, right?

My question by this point was wanting to know why exactly am I supposed to be rooting for this Diego guy? A cocky champion fighter that makes a considerable amount of money and beds many beautiful women forsakes that lifestyle for what he perceives to be a more lucrative one where he will continue to be a cocky champion fighter making even more money and getting laid even more so with women that exist for the sole purpose of being treated as winnable sex slaves - not exactly noble character traits one generally looks for in an action hero.

To make a hero as dubious as Diego Carter someone we're supposed to cheer for you need to match him up against a particularly vile villain. That's where Seifer comes in. Seifer loves killing opponents with his bare hands almost as much as he appears to relish yelling at women, threatening women, pimping women, raping women, and mercilessly beating the women he pimps to a pulp. A shame the film couldn't work in a scene or two of him kicking puppies or pushing handicapped children in wheelchairs down staircases just to further cement his image as a truly despicable human being.

Having been thwarted in FREE WILLY 3: THE RESCUE, Patrick Kilpatrick trained many years for this moment, a final one-on-one showdown with the killer whale.

Diego's change of heart stems from him and Sandra falling in love - their mutual emotionally-inhibitive accents could not be denied. He turns down the advances of a valet he won and instead gets her to reveal how all the women involved like she and Sandra are being held captive as part of Seifer's white slavery ring. "You're not doing me any favors by not sleeping with me tonight, Diego," she comically tells him before letting him know that for this insubordination Seifer will probably kill half the women being whored out just to send a message to them. How wrong she was. Seifer only savagely ground and pounds her face in as punishment for telling Diego the truth about the tournament.

As for the fight scenes that don't involve assaulting defenseless women, Never Surrender may be tailored to the MMA audience but the action choreography often owes less to mixed martial arts and more to every BLOODSPORT wannabe you've ever seen. Oh, sure, you'll see some submission holds and some striking and every now and then someone even attempts some defense, but you really don't often see jumping, spinning, hurricane kicks to heads of guy not even to put their hands up to block inside the Octagon as much as you do in this film.

One fight pits Diego against a guy called "Crusher" who I guarantee you would never pass a piss test. Another opponent reminded me of the Rastafarian tennis coach from CLUB DREAD. That capoeira fighter appeared to be trying to win his fight against Diego almost entirely on style points based on all his non-contact dance steps and gymnastic flippity-do's. Someone needed to break the news to him that there were no judges or scoring.

Appropriate that the fights have a video game quality to them given each fight is precipitated by video game graphics: animated flames explode across the screen followed by the word "FIGHT" flying out at us; a computer-animated Octagon arena spins round, and, finally, headshots and "vs" fight graphics for the two combatants about to get it on explode across the screen. The moment the fights began I had to fight the urge to pick up my Xbox controller and start hitting A.

Enter the cheat code and you can unlock Diego Carter's alternate muttonchops

NEVER SURRENDER is in the grand tradition of SHOOTFIGHTER, CHAMPIONS, TO THE DEATH, TO BE THE BEST, any number of the KICKBOXER and BLOODSPORT sequels, and a varierty of other 1990's straight-to-video martial arts tournament movies that have long been forgotten. This is just a 21st century updating of those films and is soon to be forgotten about just like most of the ones I already listed. And with good reason; the action scenes aren't spectacular enough, the naked woman not quite hot enough, and the less said about everything in between the better. It's no BLOODSPORT; that's for sure. It's not even a LIONHEART or a KICKBOXER. I've no doubt this film will appeal to a certain crowd. I suspect they are the same people in the audience at an MMA show that begin booing whenever the fighters go to the ground looking for submissions.

FOOTNOTE: Do you realize I just reviewed four films and The Asylum movie was the best of the bunch? What does that tell you about the other three?

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE BEST OF THE BEST 2