Arena

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.

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.

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

Very graphic, bloody and violent... and that's just how I like my films.

To those that hated this movie because they don't like displays of graphic violence... Why would you even start to watch something that clearly states in the synopsis "men fight to the death for the entertainment of the online masses."

*Shakes head* I don't know.... But if you like your films violent and bloody you will love this!

If you don't like violent movies definitely give this one a miss.

Also, I thought Kellan Lutz (known for The Twilight Saga) did a great job as the main character, and gave it his all.

And I officially have a new crush after watching Katia Winter in this, who actually gets naked in this... Wow!!

Well, you've seen it all before, it's not a new concept but it's still pretty interesting. I sat through the whole movie without any problems at all. Sure, some things were pretty stupid like that an infamous mass murderer wouldn't have more security or that you cannot possibly survive the amount beating the main character receives.

I liked the movie but unfortunately it was too average. The acting is nothing to complain about but the characters are pretty boring. Samuel L. Jackson gives us a typical villain and Kellan Lutz gives us the usual hero, nothing special on that front.

I liked Daniel Dae Kim's character but he had a too small a role. It had every better if they had developed his character more then I would care a lot more about the people who died. There are lots of people who die but I did not think I really cared it was unfortunate and something that they could have worked more with.

This is by no means comparable to Hunger Games/BR, but give it a shot if you just want some pretty OK entertainment.