Article 478AR Underdog review – sweat-soaked MMA movie succumbs to cliches

Underdog review – sweat-soaked MMA movie succumbs to cliches

by
Leslie Felperin
from World news | The Guardian on (#478AR)

This montage-riddled clunker hits us over the head with stereotypes of masculinity and sports-drama tropes

Sticking with religious fervour to sports-drama conventions and cliches, this sweat-soaked, palette-desaturated, montage-riddled genre exercise stars Eryk Lubos as Kosa, a once feted, now washed-up mixed martial arts (MMA) champion lured back into the caged ring for one last bout.

If it weren't for the fact that everyone is speaking Polish and that the action is set in an economically depressed province near the Lithuanian border, this would be virtually indistinguishable from any other low-budget, straight-to-DVD American story about, as the title so ploddingly spells out, an underdog. The film even assigns the hero a cute dog, just to nailgun the point. The floppy-eared mutt not only instigates the meet-cute with Aleksandra PopAawska's veterinarian love interest, but its unfortunate fate motivates the hero to get the better of the Russian bad guys.

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