Vengeance Is Bloody
Starring: Stephan Bonnar, Daniel Bernhardt, Leila Arcieri, Marieh Delfino, Ted Fox, George Saunders, Igor Jijikine, Oleg Taktarov, Sean Sherk, Travis Lutter, Gilbert Melendez, Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, Neal “Xingu” Rodil, Jason Lambert, “Judo” Gene LeBell
Director: Rich Styles & Ted Fox
2010 | 86 Minutes | Rated R
“The rules are, there are no rules.” – Lucien Gallows
I’m a little worried about something. I’m worried that we won’t be able to see Kumite style tournament fighting movies again for a long time. MMA movies seem to have taken their place and their coming in droves. Supreme Champion is yet another low budget, straight to DVD MMA movie.
Troy Jennings (Stephan Bonnar) uses his mixed martial arts skills to free his former girlfriend Jenny from the lair the twisted billionaire and former championship fighter Lucien Gallows (Daniel Bernhardt).
Supreme Champion is like a combination between Lionheart, with the underground fighting, and The Condemned, with the human game preserve. Combining two original ideas makes it original, right?
The movie feels extremely low budget from the very beginning and it never gets better. The camera work, sets and acting are all deplorable. The final “human game preserve” seems to have been filmed in a local park since there are often paved paths visible. The overhead shots of what is supposed to be Lucien’s property are super pixelated, almost like it was downloaded from the internet.
Mr. Gallows apparently gets his jollies by making slaves of large breasted women and bringing fighters to his compound to fight in his dark basement.
So, again I am forced to watch pro wrestling moves in an MMA cage. Sokoudjou performs an airplane spin during his fight. At least this time the power bomb is in defense of a triangle choke attempt. The fighting overall is OK, all very derivative of the mixed martial arts style – a little stand up, a little ground game and then throw in some stuff that has nothing to do with MMA.
The scenes mostly alternate from Stephan Bonnar fighting and Stephan Bonnar wisecracking. I will say that out of all the MMA fighters that they could have chosen from, Stephan Bonnar is the most natural choice for the immense amount of wise cracking that actually takes place in Supreme Champion. That’s not to say that it comes across as natural. Bonnar is an entertaining fighter who puts on some great interviews but he is NOT an actor.
For the record, is mixed martial arts really that closely related to strip clubs? It seems that every MMA based movie I have seen lately contains an obligatory strip club scene. It seems like an unintentional commentary on entertainment that appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Supreme Champion doesn’t have a whole lot going for it. The acting is dreadful, the script equally as bad and worst of all the fights aren’t all that good or accurate. It seems like it would be a no brainer to get the fighting right in a movie that is basically only about fighting but apparently that never occurred to the creators of Supreme Champion. I can’t recommend Supreme Champion to any action or MMA fans (the movie’s most obvious audience).
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