...and, um, there's just one of him. Bear with me here: A slimmed-down Kevin James, who's actually looking kind of handsome here (or am I crazy?), plays a high school teacher who enters the octagon to raise cash as a mixed martial arts fighter. He's basically Joel Edgerton in last year's MMA pic Warrior, only — lucky for us — he's still Kevin James, so it's a broad comedy and not a gut-wrenching drama and instead of Tom Hardy he's got Salma Hayek to wrestle with. Sigh.
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Watching mixed martial artist Gina Carano fight on television, director Steven Soderbergh was struck by inspiration: Why not build an action movie around the lethal (and yes, gorgeous) athlete to show audiences what a real action heroine could look like? Forget Angelina Jolie in Salt, or any number of actresses who’ve unconvincingly flitted their way through the genre. Carano was the real deal, a woman who can dole out punches with bone-shattering believability, leap between buildings, and battle Hollywood’s best leading men with aplomb, as evidenced in this week’s Haywire.
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There's a moment at the end of Gavin O'Connor's MMA drama Warrior in which two men who have been relentlessly beaten and pummeled in the octagon stand dripping with exhaustion, rivers of sweat mingling with the tears running down their faces. It doesn't matter that you can't tell the sweat from the tears; that's partly the point of Warrior anyway, which makes you feel every emotional wound just as acutely, if not more so, than the bruising, rib-crunching body blows. Yes, this is a mixed martial arts movie (distributed by genre specialists Lionsgate, no less). But it's also one of the most heart-wrenching and deeply felt films of the year.
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It's a curious version of the real pro wrestler Kurt Angle that you get from the ring persona he's projected over the years as a star of the WWE (née WWF) and now TNA Wrestling, where he's currently the reigning World Heavyweight Champion. The real-life former Olympic wrestler has played off his 1996 gold medal win as wrestling's bona fide "American Hero" since his 1998 WWF debut, juggling multiple wrestling companies and countless ring titles while a version of his own personal life, warped through the wrestling world's faux-realist backstage lens, is broadcast every week to millions of fans. But what Angle really wants to do -- what he wanted to do even before pro wrestling came calling -- is act. Seriously act.
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Warrior is serious. The Oscar-craving movie about mixed martial arts starring Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, Joel Edgerton and a whole bunch of other fearsome types -- like real-life fighter Erik Apple and wrestling vet Kurt Angle -- is a full-throttle ride around the ropes. In this new clip, Hardy unseats a champ in just a few quick moves. Harsh as hell, and so good.
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In Gavin O'Connor's Sept. 9 MMA drama Warrior, Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton are estranged brothers who find themselves on competing paths towards the same mixed martial arts championship, both fighting desperately for something different. Find out more about what motivates one brother to risk it all in two new stills from Warrior, debuting exclusively on Movieline.
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Mixed martial artist, sometimes actor, and YouTube brawler Kimbo Slice may get the biopic treatment from none other than Entourage's Kevin Connolly. Slice's life is, admittedly, the stuff of crazy movie dreams: Born in the Bahamas, he matriculated in Florida, lived in his car after Hurricane Andrew, almost made it into the NFL, and worked as a bouncer for a porn company before finding stardom on the internet as a real-life street fighter; Connolly hopes Slice will play himself in the film, which is looking for financing. Brutal, dramatic, based on a true story... who else smells Oscar here? [The Wrap]
The MMA sequel Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown has a new trailer, and it's got everything: Topless young men getting sweaty in the gym, winsome love interests who may or may not be strippers, at least one slo-mo jump-punch, and plenty of Michael Jai White, who co-stars as an aging MMA veteran-slash-mentor and makes his directorial debut. "Why exactly are you in this thing?" asks a comely young lady. "I need this," answers Beefy Never Back Down 2 Ingénue #4. Don't we know it.
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