Rumble Through the Dark

Jack Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is a bare knuckle fighter struggling with hallucinations after years of underground fights. He gets kidnapped by a lowlife for his large debt to Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). He manages to crash the truck and escape. A traveling carnival happens upon the crash site. Annette (Bella Thorne) is the tattooed erotica lady.

This is an amazing performance from Eckhart. The plot is a bit of a mess. I put half of it to the unstable mind of Jack Boucher. The other half is still a mess. There is some good atmosphere, but the plot construction is wrong. I actually watched this and Michael Farris Smith's other movie Desperation Road back to back. There is a connecting style between the two gothic southern crime drama. I like the style, but this writing is not good enough.

The only good thing in this is Aaron Eckhart, he was actually believable. The story from the get-go was very loose and dodgy. It starts with Jack (Aaron Eckhart) waking up after a fight, his memory is not very good and he has debts, so he's got to fight, sounds familiar?

The supporting cast was terrible, the editing and the dialogues were horrible, but I think for a low budget movie, it's what you can expect.

I'm not sure what someone like Aaron Eckhart is doing here, he was the Two-Faced Harvey in Nolan's Batman. I guess the times are really tough for him because all of his recent films are like this, crap.

The cage fighter Jack "The Butcher" Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is a loser, who was raised with love by his foster mother Maryann (Amanda Saunders) in the Mississippi. Presently he owes US$ 12,000 to the dangerous booker Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and US$ 30,000 to the bank since he sold Maryann's real estate. She is now an old woman (Jeanne Caldarera) with dementia at a nursing home, and he has promised her to bring her home. Jack receives an amount in a fight that was a fix, bets the money in a casino and raises US$ 12,000 to pay Big Momma. However, the small-time criminal Skelly (Joe Hursley) sees Jack and tells Big Momma, who promises to quit his debts if he brings Jack to her. He asks for a ride to Jack, and near to a cornfield he tries to kidnap Jack and steal his money. Jack reacts and his truck has an accident, and Jack completely dizzy leaves the man and the truck in the cornfield. Meanwhile, the owner of a carnival, Baron (Ritchie Coster), sees the truck in the cornfield and stops his crew. He sees Skelly dying and his attraction Annette (Bella Thorne) finds the envelope of money. The mechanic Ricky Joe (Mike McColl) peeps the scene and becomes curious to know what Annette has found. When Jack wakes up in a bar, he returns to the cornfield and finds that he was stolen. Now Big Momma wants him to fight the huge Ax (Derek Russo) to pay his debts to her.

"Rumble Through the Dark" is a depressing drama about the life of a cage fighter that could have been better and better. The performance of Aaron Eckhart is magnificent and did not deserve this awful screenplay. The beautiful and hot Bella Thorne is another attraction of this movie. The story in an ambient of losers and small-time criminals is melancholic and indicated only for specific audience. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Rumble Through the Dark"

I always been a fan of Martial Arts movies so when i see a new one release i try to watch it as soon as possible. When i saw Aaron Eckhart in the main role, i was a bit surprised tough as the guy is not really known to do martial arts movies.

Turn out the movie is more of a drama but it does have some fairly brutal and entertaining fight. Yet if you tune only for the fights, you may get disapointed as they are not numerous enough for a fight movie fan. Think of it more like that Tom Hardy movie call Warrior. A drama about a character set in a fight background.

Aaron Eckhart's character Jack is a very broken man and the first half of the movie is a bit dark and hard to follow at times. You wonder where this is all going but the second half make a lot more sense and i dunno what it is with Bella Thorne, but every time i see her in a movie i feel she bring a lot of charisma and get me hook to her characters, even if she rarely in any big movies or huge roles.

Overall this was an interesting movie wich i enjoyed watching. I don't think the replay value is there to watch it again so i would recommand a rental instead of a purchase, but its definately one worth watching once. If the first 40-45 minutes confuse or bore you a bit, give it a chance and stay for the rest, its worth it.

Who would have thought that this adaptation was interesting to be carried out?

Who can think that Bella Thorne could act?

What wrong has Aaron Eckhart done to go from playing an iconic Batman character to this impossible to sustain parody in 15 years?

Surely these are questions that will never have answers.

This film, based on a book, deals with the life of a boxer from the underworld and his (not very credible) story of overcoming and suffering.

Gambler, alcoholic, absent father and addict, a combination that leads to a plot that is difficult to grasp wherever you try.

You can watch it in the background on a Saturday afternoon and not much more.

I return to one of my initial questions: what wrong has Aaron Eckhart done? At 56 years old, it seems that his career is over if he doesn't make some good decision regarding leading roles...