Excellent but underrated film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Blistering performances.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This wasn't really a bad Royal Rumble PPV. The Rumble itself was alright as it could have been better.FIRST MATCH- BROCK LESNAR VS. BIG SHOW W/ PAUL HEYMAN WINNER ADVANCES IN THE ROYAL RUMBLE just a big man vs. big man match. Most are pretty boring & this one is a bit. It's good to see Lesnar get the win by carrying the big man, Big Show up for an F-5 to get the win & will advance in the Royal Rumble. 3/10 SECOND MATCH- DUDLEY BOYS VS. LANCE STORM & WILLIAM REGAL FOR THE WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP Pretty bad tag team match. But the only great thing is to see the Dudley Boys win to become the new World Tag Team Champions. 3/10 THIRD MATCH- TORRIE Wilson VS. DAWN MARIE Boring Diva match. Torrie Wilson gets the win over Dawn Marie as I hope this ridiculous feud between them has stopped. 2/10 FOURTH MATCH- TRIPLE H W/ RIC FLAIR VS. SCOTT STEINER FOR THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP This match was a bit draggy, slow & sloppy at some times. But it picked on okay a little bit near the end. With Steiner almost dominating the whole match, HHH gets himself DQ'd on purpose after Ric Flair interfered. Steiner won by DQ but HHH is still the World Champ. Steiner goes mad on both men & beats HHH on after the match. 4/10 FIFTH MATCH- KURT ANGLE VS. CHRIS BENOIT FOR THE WWE CHAMPIONSHIP Wow, these two men blew the roof off the arena when they stepped toe to toe in the ring together. Both Benoit & Angle seriously know their own techniques & moves in the ring. A lot of reverse by both men but in the end after both men try to make each other tap out, Angle locks in the Angle Lock & after long minutes, Benoit finally taps out giving Angle the win to retain his WWE Championship. What a match. 6/10 SIXTH MATCH- ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH Good Royal Rumble match, not the best of course but it was still alright. The final 4 are Kane, Undertaker, Batista & Brock Lesnar. Undertaker eliminates Batista, then turns his back on Kane & eliminates him as well. Suddenly Brock Lesnar comes behind & eliminates him from the Rumble as Brock Lesnar has won the Royal Rumble & will be going to Wrestlemania XIX to verse the WWE Champion in the mainevent. 7/10 Wasn't really a bad Royal Rumble, but it could have seriously been better if the matches just took a bit longer. The match between Angle & Benoit was just the best as it was plain perfect.Overall: I'll give it 6/10 & a D+

2003 Royal RumbleMy first Royal Rumble, and first WWE PPV, actually. I've only become a WWE fan quite recently, since I've only started getting RAW and Velocity after No Way Out 04. Yet, while I was in NYC, I decided to pick this baby up. It looked like a good cardAnd quite frankly, it did not disappoint, as some other reviews might lead you to believe.Opening match: Brock Lesnar vs. The Big ShowIt's pretty funny to see the HUGE pop Lesnar gets during this match, and compare it to the GARGANTUAN heat he got at Wrestlemania XX. It's like he went from the most over superstar in the card, to the least over. I don't like him, myself. But the fact of the matter is, this is a pretty cool power match. It's funny to see Paul Heyman on the outside of the ring, going absolutely berserk sometimes. And, the two consecutive belly to belly overhead suplexes Brock Lesnar gave to Show were awesome to see. All the match needed to be perfect was Lesnar giving Show a superplex off the turnbuckle, breaking the ring in half. But, it remains a Smackdown! exclusive moment, I'm afraid. Lesnar wins it, of course, to a huge pop. An entertaining match-up, 7/10World Tag Championship: Lance Storm & William Regal vs. DudleyzMeh. I don't really care about this match. I saw it was, nothing special. The post-match interview by the Dudley is more entertaining. 5/10Torrie Wilson vs. Dawn MarieI didn't see this match. I don't care.World's Heavyweight Championship match: Big Poppa Pump Scott Steiner vs. Triple H in accompanied by Nature Boy Ric FlairOK. This is a match that really gets on my nerves not because of the match itself, but because of the reaction and criticism a lot of fans give on it. It's a FINE match. It's a cool match, even. Granted, it has some ugly moments, but it has some very impressive bits as well. I loved seeing Steiner (One of my favourite superstars ever) manhandling Triple H. Just seeing Triple H getting manhandled overall was awesome, even though I knew he'd be walking out World's champion anyway all along. Bad moments: Triple H on the outside of the ring, selling Scott Steiner's blows to the head. It was a really crappy way of selling the punches. I can't remember many other bad moments overall, Steiner had a bit of ring rust, definitely, but I really don't think he is to blame for some of the matches' flaws. It just became quite popular to hate on Scott Steiner, and it became quite popular to hate on this match. It also bothered me that during the match, there was a group of people with loud voices chanting ''Triple H!'' and ''Steiner sucks!''. Putting Ric Flair on Hunter's corner didn't help Steiner getting fans, either. Flair needs to be face, period. The fans love him, they just can't hate him or anyone he's associated with.Great moments: You know in all Triple H matches, when the opponent has the momentum, and Hunter stops the momentum with his facebuster? Steiner was crushing Triple H, and he pulled out the facebuster...but it does nothing to Steiner. In fact, it hurts Triple H. This was an awesome moment, and the crowd went ''Huh????''. I really didn't see this coming, I thought this would be the moment where HHH would stop Scott Steiner's momentum and eventually win with a pedigree. Whenever Scott Steiner did push ups in front of Triple H, especially when HHH is busted wide open, on the canvas, tired as hell, beat up, and Steiner's just relaxing and doing push ups. That was great to see. After Steiner delivers an awesome series of knife edge chops to the chest of the Game, you can see Hunter's whole chest is red as hell.After the match, Steiner puts on the Steiner Recliner on a...pretty much dead Triple H. All the refs and staff are around him, trying to pull him away, but it takes Bischoff's words to break it up. Very cool. Another great moment is when Scott Steiner has Triple H in a powerslam/Tombstone Piledriver like position, HHH turns it around, Steiner turns it around again but receives a pretty cool looking Neck breaker. The crowd loved this. The finish was of course, very disappointing, especially to myself, since I'm a HUGE Scott Steiner freak. Hail Freakzilla.Winner: Scott SteinerOverall, 7/10WWE Championship: Kurt Angle vs Chris BenoitThis is one of the greatest matches I have ever seen in my life. Absolutely incredible, especially if you don't know the outcome. I won't spoil it to you if you don't know who wins, despite the age of the match.9/10Royal Rumble match:A pretty entertaining match-up... Edge 'turning on' Christian after their temporary 'alliance' was VERY cool! The beginning was nice too, with Christian tricking Shawn Micheals into thinking he was Jericho. Who saw HBK's early elimination coming? That was really unexpected.It was cool seeing Tommy Dreamer bringing in all the weapons, ECW style! And there was a VERY cool double team aerial move by Rey Mysterio and Edge on Chris Nowinski (who did his job as a comedic factor in the rumble). Jericho got tons of near eliminations, very cool. But the finish... honestly, what's so interesting about seeing Undertaker and Brock Lesnar the last two men in the royal rumble match... if they were the last to enter the match anyway? So what if they win? It's not like they actually had much of a challenge. HBK and Benoit, who were both the first men in on their respective royal rumble victories, now they made an impression. Those two athletes, those two superstars made a true blue impact! Lesnar wins the rumble... as the 29th entry. Great...7/10Get the DVD if you can. It has a lot of entertaining interviews, promos, and the royal rumble 03 commercial and respective Making Of. Very funny.Overall event rating: 7.8/10 . Get it on DVD if you can!

This is an interesting PPV as it contains what I consider to be both the best and worst of the year. In one corner we have the Angle/Benoit match that was so good the entire arena gave it a standing ovation. This is my personal MOTY for 2003, a technical classic up there with all the other greats. We also have the Jericho/HBK feud start to build with Jericho eliminating HBK from the Rumble via cheating, this would climax with a 5-star match at WrestleMania two months later after it simmered a bit. Finally we also have the Rumble match, the first one after the brand extension, which actually made it more interesting as we saw RAW talent "compete" against SmackDown talent in a quasi-brand war.On the bad side of things, we got a Steiner/HHH match which is great for getting yourself to sleep just by counting the botched moves instead of sheep. Then we have the Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie match which, thankfully, ended their feud over Torrie's "dead" father Al Wilson but we had to go through this dud of a match.Then we have the one curtain-jerker match with Big Show/Brock Lesnar and a midcard match with Dudley Boyz/Lance Storm & William Regal to round everything out, resulting in a PPV that is stangely balanced between good and bad.

*** SPOILERS***The 2003 Royal Rumble was an average PPV event; it wasn't thrilling but it had a few moments.The opening match pitted Brock Lesnar VS The Big Show (or rather, The Big Slow) in a match where the winner would advance to the Royal Rumble. It was a short and decent match.Next up was William Regal and Lance Storm VS The Dudley Boyz. Nothing memorable about this match and the same can be said for the next match between Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie. Two beautiful ladies but a rubbish match!Then we came to the World Title match between overrated champion Triple H and psycho Big Poppa Pump. I had high hopes for this match and it had been hyped for weeks. Big Poppa Pump had been quite entertaining in the now defunct WCW and I was expecting a good match. Now, it wasn't an excellent match but it wasn't a bad match either. Big Poppa Pump didn't really live up to my expectations and he was full of ring rust. In fact, Triple H was the man who saved this match and made it into a presentable match. The finish was rather insulting though.Next up, the Smackdown Title match between Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle. These two men are wrestling machines. Their match was the match of the night and we simply couldn't have asked either men for anything more. Great great match which was won by Angle.Then, we came to the 30 Man Rumble (for so long, one of my favourites). Again, this wasn't anything special but wasn't too bad. My favourite guy Hulk Hogan didn't appear which was quite disappointing and my other favourite Shawn Michaels was eliminated within minutes. One other complaint was that some of the wrestlers who wrestled were of no interest to me (such as John Cena). But the Rumble had it's moments. Wrestlers such as Edge, Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Kane and Rob Van Dam put on some good performances.The Rumble match was eventually won by Brock Lesnar who entered late and the finish of the match was anti-climatic. Also, the match got me thinking. The Rumble has been so predictable for years because of the winner gets a title shot stipulation. Everyone knew that Brock would win because WWE were building up a match between Brock and Kurt Angle. This made the Rumble very predictable. You just knew that guys like Edge or Shawn Michaels were not gonna win. So, the old Rumble theory that 'Anyone can win' went out of the window.If you're going to watch this, make sure you rent it. Don't buy it.