My First Movie Reivew

I am going to attempt to write this from memory alone, no internet help here, going back some 15 years.

As a kid one of my favorite movies was the cinematic torture device known as Lionheart starring Jean Claude VanDam. TBS fueled my obsession by playing the movie as if somehow a nonstop repetition would magically cure cancer (yet to be proven, or tested in a clinical lab). The point being, I have seen the movie a ton of times, but it has been 15 years. Until Sunday, or so it would seem. For some reason I received a copy of Fighting starring Channing Tatum from Blockbuster and in a hangover induced romp decided it was time to watch. The movie seemed oddly familiar to the point I thought I might have already seen it, and somewhere in the back of my mind I kept waiting for a commercial break telling me when the next episode of Home Improvement (edit, thanks Owen) was coming on. Strange.


It was about half way through the movie that it hit me, “this is the EXACT same movie as Lionheart”! I hate to ruin the movie for you, but here are the points of the movie that are exactly the same:

1. White guy scrappy fighter with sketchy background

2. Fighter comes to the big city to find a hobbled black guy to be his bookie

3. Bookie was going to be the best fighter ever but blew out his knee 10 years ago

4. Bookie looks like he could have been beat up by a homeless man

5. Bookie has to strike a deal with the people that use to back him and now are trying to set him up for failure…he then wins a huge sum of money over them in the end.

6. Fighter falls for an unfortunate women with money and child care issues.

7. Fighter fights a foreign guy in a warehouse/ basement

8. Fighter fights a guy twice his size

9. Fighter is supposed to ‘throw’ the final fight against a ‘professional’ but wins in the end

10. The movie sucks

I just hope that in 15 years from now some poor guy is waxing poetically about how he used to watch this great movie Fighting on TBS that now Will Smith’s kid has ruined with a remake.