Street Fight co-director/co-producer/editor Graeme Noble stars as Simon Bain, ex-professional boxer and recovering heroin addict. He’s living with his sister and her husband while trying to get his life back on track. He recently lost his father to Cancer and hasn’t been doing well since.
Bain soon learns of an underground club where people fist fight until someone taps out. These brawls are streamed live online, allowing viewers to watch and place bets. Knowing he doesn’t have much else to offer the world, Bain re-enters the kick-punch world and signs up for this highly secret and illegal fighting competition in hopes to gain back a little of the boxing credit he once attained along ago.
There are a lot of problems with Street Fight, but the biggest one is the acting, which is not convincing at all. Everyone (and I stress everyone) looks like they’re reading from cue cards that are five feet in front of them. There has only been one person widely known to do this and successfully pull it off, and that’s Marlon Brando. Some people aren’t meant to star in films – every actor in Street Fight fits unmistakably in this clump.
The story really doesn’t piece together well either. Bain randomly meets a girl one night at a bar, they barely speak, and all of the sudden she’s the love of his life, championing him through this dangerous competition. We are given no character development or any emotion from this girl (probably because she’s reading cue cards). There are a few side stories that I won’t get into but these only serve to make the film longer and are not at all necessary to push the narrative forward.
Another thing I couldn’t quite fathom is the fighters; all of them are skin and bones. Not sure how this street fighting competition became so popular with only having guys weighing no more than 150 pounds fight. I’ve only had my a*s kicked a few times in my days, and I can promise it was from someone three times my size. And yes, it hurt like a mother f****r. If you take a look at all of those successful full-contact sports, you’ll notice all of the meatheads are ripped and can punch a hole through your stomach while knitting a sweater if they choose. Unless this street fighting competition is supposed to be a mockery of skinny kids punching the s**t out of each other, it’s not at all threatening.
Street Fight is by a bunch of people who watched a lot of kung fu movies growing up and gave it their best shot at mirroring they scenes they loved. Even though some of the fight scenes are well choreographed, this film is unfortunately nothing close to a knockout.
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