Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I don't like to write negative reviews, but with a film like this. I feel like i'm being more then modest. So the film was sold to the audience as an original take on an inspired action film, that all boys and men love "Wrong bet" starring Van Damme. The film stars Tatum in one of his first action roles, and it fails. You can't really call it a remake, because its not. You can't call it an adaptation, because its not. You cant call it an Action film, because its not. You cant call it Drama, because its not. You can call it a bad attempt at film making all together. The film has two, maybe 3 fights in total. Tatum character wins one fight by accident, and that makes him the champion. Yes, we don't see a montage or even hear it in passing dialogue that he beat other fighters or that he is a great fighter. We see him go up against one guy, who slips and knocks himself out while beating the living sh out of Tatum and thats it.The acting in the film is pretty terrible, Tatum didn't even try to act he just appeared angry in every shot. Howard was playing the same role he had played in hustle, just a pimp from the hood, you can say.IF you want to watch this film, Don't! instead look up and stream/ download or watch the Van Damme version Wrong Bet or Lion-heart, much more enjoyable with the same level of acting, but better and actual fight scenes, better story and a really cool soundtrack and theme music.

This gritty urban drama has Channing Tatum -doing a decent job as small-town boy Shawn MacArthur, trying and for the most part failing to make it in New York City. Barely earning a living selling counterfeit goods on the streets, his luck changes when he meets scam artist/fight promoter Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard) who introduces him to the violent underground world of bare knuckle boxing.The two form an uneasy partnership and almost overnight Shawn becomes a star brawler on the circuit, culminating with his big show down against (ironically) a guy from his home town who was his high-school rival.All in this is fairly predictable, the dialogue is quite mumble-ie at times, there's a nice enough romance although without much heat, the fight scenes are decent especially the final match, and there's a couple of plot twists but nothing too OMG.For the majority of the film we barely know anything about the characters and I found them all a bit vague. Tatum's past is hinted at (daddy issues) but by the time that comes to comes light I didn't much care. I like Terrence Howard but he seemed to struggle here, his character again vague and with a strange accent. I did enjoy their scenes together though, they played well off each other.The director also failed to make it seem like any time was passing, Channing appeared to have all of his (increasingly well paid fights) within the span of a about a week and never did any sort of training but kept improving. I just kept thinking I'm glad this isn't my life, everyone hustling to make a dollar. 3/2/16

I saw a clip of Channing Tatum shadow boxing the pole on the train and thought that this looked promising. Unfortunately it turned out to be a very boring predictable movie with really poor dialogue and overplayed characters.Some good actors in this movie, but nothing about them or the movie itself made me want to buy in to it. It was just hard work. Essentially it was a series of average (to be honest pretty boring) fight scenes linked with a predictable, boring storyline that contained a forced and unbelievable love thread.Another example of the trailer being better than the movie.

I can only conclude that the script for this film was only 3 pages long and basically consisted of phrases like "This guy tries to convince this other guy to fight" "this guy decides to fight" "They fight." all the dialogue had to be improvised by the actors and either they weren't good at improvising or the director wasn't paying attention so they just kept talking and talking and talking and they had to edit together the most coherent dialogue possible. There are only 3 or 4 fights in the film. The first fight lasts a total of I believe 30 seconds before the opponent travels head-first into a water fountain. The second fight gets broken up before it even starts, the third fight (if there was one) I don't even remember. The last fight was the only one that was moderately decent.Been a while since I watched this movie so I can't elaborate too much, but forgettable fights, characters you don't care about, awful dialogue. I'd say avoid this one unless you enjoy being bored.