Arena, Les Gladiateurs de la Mort

Logan (Samuel L. Jackson) runs an internet gladiatorial bloodsport. Denver fireman David Lord (Kellan Lutz) loses his pregnant wife in a car crash. He's despondent. While on a bender in rundown Acapoco, he is kidnapped by Milla (Katia Winter) and forces to fight in the game. Taiga (Daniel Dae Kim) is the neighboring prisoner.

Jackson is camping it up as much he can. The movie and Lutz refuse to allow it to have any fun. Lord's motivation is problematic. It would have so much simpler to kidnap the pregnant wife and force him to fight for her life. They give him a sword and I don't know why he doesn't just go on a suicide mission. His reasoning makes no reason. Lutz's major failure is his inability to make this ridiculous. It's the wrong actor doing a bad script and failing to understand the silliness of his movie. Even the fights lack commitment. It's a lot of blood and gore with no tension. Then there is the big fat twist at the end. It rewrites so much of the earlier parts of the movie that it would be bad if I actually care.

While I agree with the highly negative reviews already posted, I didn't find it *quite* as offensively bad as they did. Sure, the fight choreography was poor, at times, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Amsterdam Heavy. The acting wasn't much better, but it was still about par for the genre. I guess this is place where I'm supposed to express incredulity over Sam Jackson appearing in this movie, but, really, everyone who watches lots of low budget, direct-to-video movies knows that he'll appear in anything. He's done some really mediocre (and even bad) movies, in the past.

Anyways, the main plot consists of a James Bond villain (Sam Jackson) kidnapping people and forcing them into fighting to the death. That's it. Nothing else. No pretenses to art here. Now, if the fight choreography and stunts were good, I might able to suggest this to fans of direct-to-video B movies inspired by Enter the Dragon and Bloodsport. Unfortunately, they're really not very well done, with some of them looking downright crappy and unimpressive. Some others, however, end up looking pretty decent, though nowhere near Enter The Dragon or Bloodsport. The direction focuses on stylized, bloody violence, with fast cuts, slow motion, and lots of posing. If Michael Bay drives you nuts, I doubt you'll like this much, either.

There's a rather surprising amount of gratuitous exploitation in this movie. If you're prudish at all, I'd warn you to avoid it. There's constant, gory violence and occasional full frontal nudity (female only), making this one of the most overt, unapologetic, and cynical attempts at making a mainstream action movie that I've seen recently. I guess they're saying that if the nudity doesn't get you off, the violence will, like we're all a bunch over-stimulated sociopaths. There's a satirical element to all this gratuitous exploitation, but I think it was inserted merely to deflect criticism.

If you're looking for exploitation, there's plenty of that. Otherwise, I'd say you're best off skipping it. The action scenes aren't good enough. Some people have criticized this as being pornographic, and I have to agree; the violence seems to be almost fetishized. However, amoral as I am, I find the lack of plot and poor fight choreography to be the true problems with this movie.

There is little original in the story line. Picture Death Race or Gamer with the protagonist fighting to the death every week instead of racing a car or in a fps mock up with real people. Furthermore, if any of the social commentary on where our society is headed based on the viewer's ever growing appetite for realism and violence is meant to be novel, it barely registers with this viewer. However, adding Samuel Jackson as the puppet master for these spectacles certainly makes even a retread seem re-energized.   Kellan Lutz gives a solid enough performance as the sympathetic protagonist finding himself in the do or die scenario and Johnny Messner is a more than adequate secondary villain. Mixed with some eye candy and an arc (with a nice twist) that creates sufficient  anticipation as to how it's all going to end results in an above average viewing experience.

I have never written a review about a movie before, but this movie is so terrible (yes "is", I am 1h10 mins into the movie), I felt compelled to write a review, since I regularly check film ratings on this site before watching them. I only regret the fact that I never check this one before hand, I guess the fact that Samuel L starred in it, kind of through me off, but that will never happen again. Everything about the movie is poor, story-line, plot, acting, it is so boring it is unbelievable. Just a bunch of useless violence. Yes Samuel is a great actor and has done such great movies, and after watching "pulp fiction" again a few weeks back, I am so disappointed that he accepted to star in this movie.

EDIT: Forgot to include the bad movie rating, Every actors in the movie should have a star taken off a previously made one for accepting to take part in this useless piece of garbage.

Totally USELESS

If you're craving a lot gladiatorial gore with a side order of nude babes, this one suits those baser parts of your nature. Samuel L. Jackson overacts as the villain (not nearly so amusingly evil as in The Kingsmen) to offset the degree to which Kellan Lutz underplays his heroics. The plot is pure paint-by-numbers.

And now for the exception. At about 25 minutes, there's a quick, flawlessly executed Easter egg nod to a much better film, Office Space. Fans of that one will love that brief flash of wit that's nowhere to be found in the rest of the script.