Truly Dreadful Film

Amateur movie with Big budget

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I watched this one on Amazon Prime under the title FATAL COMBAT. It's a typical straight to video thriller of the mid 1990s which once again uses the old 'illegal arena fighting' storyline for effect. Here, chiselled fighter Jeff Wincott plays the world's least convincing professor who is spurred into action when his pregnant wife is attacked by thugs. He's thrown into prison where he's forced to fight by a sadistic overlord with murder in mind.This B-movie is in essence a prison film mixed with the usual arena fighting material. The fights are okay but the plot is extremely forgettable as are the characters and set-up. It's nice to see Sven-Ole Thorsen (Arnie's regular stand-in) playing the villain of the piece but, truth be told, this is one of those films you'll forget about watching just a few minutes after the credits roll.

FATAL COMBAT here (originally and more aptly titled NO EXIT) isn't your typical Jeff Wincott action picture. There are fair few aspects linking this one to typical martial arts B-movies of the time, with a better-than-average dramatic cast and a script that definitely tries to be more consequential and serious than most films dealing with secret fight tournaments. For some folks, this might make it one of the best Wincott vehicles. Me, I thought it was all a bit much; part of this can be blamed on the movie's marketing, which doesn't indicate that this is a departure from the norm for Jeff, but also on the fact that there's not much payoff for the drama in either a resolution or karate fights.The story: Philosophy professor and martial artist John Stoneman (Wincott) is kidnapped by a wealthy sadist who broadcasts a to-the-death tournament to paying clients from a subarctic prison (Richard Fitzpatrick).I think most of this film's unusual nature can be attributed to writer-director Damian Lee, the boxer-turned-filmmaker who became one of the more ambitious, hit-or-miss blenders of the action and drama genres. His film here is equal parts drama and action, but the latter is definitely weaker than the former. There are between four and six fights - depending on what you consider to be a fight scene - and virtually none of them are really worth watching. Jeff's really by himself here, since the closest he comes to having an opponent who can match his martial arts is Sven-Ole Thorsen as the sadistic champion, but Thorsen's more of a brawler and doesn't contribute a good match. Even when Jeff engages a couple opponents in spear fights within an electrified cage, the result is merely average (how is that even possible?).At its height, the movie certainly approaches being a respectable drama. The cast also includes the late Guylaine St-Onge as Wincott's wife and Douglas O'Keefe (Nuremberg) as the top henchman, and the result is a film that focuses more on and mostly pulls off its acting content. Jeff's given more legitimate dramatic scenes in this one than perhaps any other of his films from the same era. The problem for me is that the movie is so unabashedly dark and bleak that it gets downright depressing after a while. Here's infanticide and rape in the same movie, not to mention weightier murders than we're used to in films like these, without any substantial payoff - jeez, even THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION knew when to throw a bone, and it didn't even have martial art fight scenes.Two things I admire about the film are the philosophical (or anti-philosophical?) angle the script tries for and how believable the freezing setting is made, with the performers' breath visible when they're speaking - it probably wasn't the easiest shoot. Altogether, the movie is an interesting departure from the action norm, but the novelty wears off by the time the film is halfway over due to a lack of tradeoff from the action department. On a bad day, this would get two stars from me, but because I can see the genuine effort that went into this one's production, I'll be generous.

Professor John Stoneman (Wincott) is a college professor who gives a lot of homework, but is a man of peace and nonviolence. He teaches his students about tolerance while hurling an unending stream of racial epithets against fellow student/friend Jason Samuels (Di Mambro). Luckily he was just playing a character to prove a point. Stoneman's wife Carmel (St-Onge) is also a professor at the same university and pregnant with their first child. Things are looking up for the Stonemans, but suddenly Carmel is attacked in the parking garage of the hospital after getting a checkup about the baby. Gangs of punks that hang out in hospital parking lots are a menace in Canada, or anywhere else, so John, who is also like a 200th degree black belt, dispatches them easily...but Carmel loses the baby in the process.The story of the attack was on the news, and evil mastermind Houston Armstrong (Fitzpatrick) was watching. You see, he runs his own underground TV network which has one show - No Exit. It is a fight-to-the-death tournament where people Armstrong has kidnapped and imprisoned on his compound in the middle of nowhere fight and die on live TV. The problem is, as you might think with underground death matches, that the losers keep dying, so there is the need for fresh blood to enter the competition. So both Stoneman and Samuels are spirited away to the compound and locked up. They must fight to survive. The star fighter of No Exit is the hulking, evil brute Darcona (Thorsen). He is known for being tough, being the biggest jerk ever, and shouting "Yahhhhhhh!!!!" a lot. So will Stoneman be able to beat Armstrong, Darcona, and Armstrong's second-in-command Tayback (Douglas O'Keeffe)? Basically an over-intellectualized punchfighter crossed with a prison movie, and as much as the filmmakers probably wanted to reference Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit, Fatal Combat is something of a cross between The Running Man (1987) and Death Warrant (1990). The movie suffers from a lack of originality, and the constant disjointed cuts and cutaways to a screen blasting with static as transitions between scenes make it seem like it is trying too hard to be cool.The movie starts with a "Nooooooo!!!" and Wincott says "Nooooooo!!!!" many times throughout the film, and a few of the times, it is in slow motion, so the "NO" is a few octaves lower than it would normally be. This is more funny than serious and the filmmakers should have known that. Fatal Combat has an unnecessarily dark and super-serious tone that we felt did not serve the film that well. For instance, after Darcona is already established as the ultimate villain, is it absolutely necessary that he rape one of the other characters? Another thing we noticed is Fatal Combat is especially gay. Not a negative criticism - just an observation. Yes, there are the normal greased-up, shirtless men grappling with each other, but the male-male rape scene and some of the other prison antics made it seem gayer than usual. Wincott has a montage training scene in tight spandex (to the catchy rock tune "No Exit" by Ken Greer, Phil Naro and Myles Hunter - no band name listed).Sadly, because of the largely negative tone of the film, and the stylistic touches falling flat, we found we were not that invested in the final fight or the final outcome. Wincott probably relished the role of playing a professor that can also fight, and he was probably desperate to tell the world he's not your average meathead, and if the movie has a saving grace it's him. Fitzpatrick is well-cast as the evil mastermind who has a command center - and what baddie worth his salt doesn't? Not Jeff Wincott's best - check out Last Man Standing (1996) - and there are plenty of flaws - but punchfighter completists could do worse.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

I had some expectations for this movie. Jeff Wincott has starred in several great martial arts movies in the past, and the plot looked interesting. It was the typical "people get caught by insane rich guy who has them fight each other to the death while broadcasting it to other rich scumbags who want entertainment" plot again. This outline always has potential, but this time they far from utilized it the way they should. Most important of all: The fight scenes are way too few and way too far between. The point of a movie like this is to have lots of great action, and when that doesn't happen it becomes rather pointless. I don't think the fight scenes were that good either. Wincott was OK, Sven-Ole Thorsen was so-so as the bad guy, and all in all there was nothing memorable in this movie. You will forget about this film an hour after watching.