Screenhead

You may have never heard of Channing Tatum, but you’ll be fairly surprised by his big excursion into the big screen with the release of Fighting.

Channing will be playing Shawn MacArthur, as a young street hustler from the wilds of…Birmingham, Alabama.  Um, okay…anyway, he’s moved to New York, where he’s hawking ersatz Harry Potter books and occasionally discount umbrellas.  Anyway, while selling his ersatz Harry Potter books, he gets in rolling three-way fistfight that draws the notice of former brawler turned agent / hustler Harvey Boarden.  Harvey sees an opportunity in Shawn, and sets him up with a series of illegal underground bare-knuckle brawls, and Shawn steadily advances up through the ranks.  Eventually, he gets set up with the fight of his life as a face from his past surfaces—can he stand up and face his own past or will he get knocked out by the strife?

For those of you making comparisons to Fight Club, you’re not alone.  I got about fifteen minutes into this thing when I wound up saying that this was all just a huge Fight Club knockoff that had been heavily dumbed-down and stripped of all its pedagogery.  Yeah, there aren’t any rants here about sleepless nights and IKEA and materialism—just guys beating the crap out of each other and the occasional appearance of hot chicks.

Yes, this is very much a guy movie.  Chances are you could probably talk your girlfriend into seeing it by virtue of mentioning Channing Tatum, but aside from that, total guy movie.

Now, if you go in expecting very, very little, then chances are good that you won’t be disappointed with this movie.  If you expect, say, a rousing brawl or maybe a little romance or an empty-headed good time, then you’re definitely going to get what you’re after.  But if you want strong, well-developed characters or important, valuable life lessons, then forget it—this little fluff muffin of a movie is never going to supply any of that.  This sucker’s about as worthwhile and consequential as a ball of pocket lint.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad movie—it does what it sets out to do, in that it entertains you with tons of fistfights and such, and there’s a little bit of growth and character development.  It’s never going to be mistaken for high art, but it’s not really unpleasant to watch, either.  The storyline’s thin as skin on gravy, but everything that should be there is.  I’m not going to suggest you run out to the theatre and catch this—you can definitely wait for video even if you really LOVE a movie with plenty of fistfights—but if you go against my suggestion and see it anyway, you’ll have a pretty fair time as long as you go in with eyes wide open about just what it is you’re walking into.

In fact, words like “pedestrian”, “average” and “mediocre” were invented just for this kind of potboiler action / romance / drama.  There’s not much to this one, but what’s there isn’t necessarily bad.  It’ll be worth a look if you get a cheap matinee or wait for video.

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