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.

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.

And not even Aaron Eckhart is very good. Well, he is in a way but I sure do not believe in his character one bit. And the girl playing the Lady with tattoos is just plain a horrible actress. I think the only believable person / character is the Circus Director. The story is simple and the efforts to infuse this with "heartfelt moments" are just lengthy and tragic: In fact the whole middle part of the movie is more or less these slow and horribly boring heartfelt moments. The bare knuckle fighting that was advertised did not even try to be believable and in any case he constantly used brass knuckles.

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"

The movie's alright. Nothing so special about it but also it's not bad either. Since it's not a blockbuster or whatever I didn't put too much expectation on it so I feel like it's a decent one to just casually watch. Of course you are not getting crazy deep thoughts out of the movie. It tells a story and that's it, which for me is easy to understand (I haven't read the book, though).

There was action and fighting which I think was good enough with some being really nice, still I do need a little bit more action. The emotions were there and I appreciate that they tried to establish something but for me it's quite a bit over the top as it seems there was only a way to show the emotional connection so it kinda gets repetitive over time. Apart from that, everything else was fine, the characters had their roles, the color and lightning in some scenes were good which pleased my eyes.

Aaron Eckhart did his job well as always. The child actor (Michael A. Waycaster) was pretty good.

Solid 6.5 for me but props to some really nice scenes I'll give it a 7.