DVD review: 'Blood and Bone' updates the 1980's underground fight movie formula

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment

Blood and Bone is about an ex-con named Bone who infiltrates an underground fighting ring with mysterious intentions. That's pretty much it. Sure, his mysterious intentions are eventually revealed, but it is not any sort of big twist or revelation meant to blow the viewer away; this movie simply exists as a small budgeted, fairly well made underground fighting flick. If this exact same screenplay were made in 1988, it would have been funded by a studio and Jean Claude Van Damme would have starred in it.

But it is 2010, and the star of this indie-financed, direct-to-video slug fest is Michael Jai White (the star of the most excellent Black Dynamite and the most heinous Spawn). White plays Bone with a Seagalian-type of bad ass aura. He's always really calm and cool, even in the face of danger, and takes very little damage throughout the course of the movie. Bone is the type of character that is very awesome because of how he routinely destroys all competition put in front of him.

They show a character called Hammer, played by professional fighter and gigantic man Bob Sapp, destroy some random cowboy guy and they set him up to be some huge unstoppable beast. They also show Hammer getting pumped for a fight by pounding some bottle of liquor and sweating profusely and hyping himself up while another guy injects him with an unexplained substance and assists in the hyping. And then Bone mows right through him. It is a lot of fun when Bone gets ready to fight and people think he's some random chump, but the viewer knows that Bone is not to be trifled with. A few more professional MMA guys show up and get their butts handed to them, so fans of the fun sport of human chicken fighting will see some familiar faces. For me, the best cameo was seeing five-time world karate champion and former professional wrestler Ernest "The Cat" Miller (The Wrestler) as a fighter named Mommie Dearest. Kimbo Slice is also very convincing as a scary-looking, shank-wielding prison inmate. Whoda thunk it?Helping Bone navigate through the underground fight circuit is Pinball (Hook, "Rufio!"), Bone rents a room from a chick named Tamara (Nona Gaye, daughter of Marvin), deals with aspiring gentlemen villain James (Eamonn Walker, Unbreakable) and comes face to face with The Consortium, namely Consortium member Franklin McVeigh (Julian Sands, Ocean's Thirteen, Arachnophobia). There's some chick who is a heroin junkie and another chick is a crack head dropping dimes, and there are some Neighborhood Dealers and the Old Man on the Porch that confronts them about selling. But none of that really matters. This movie is all about Michael Jai White and his awesomely bad ass performance as Bone. If this was made in 1988, it would have been released in theaters, pretty much as it stands right now, albeit without all the cell phone footage taken by fight bystanders. Actually, this might be one of the least underground "underground fight rings." Bone easily finds the first fight by walking up to the area set up with a DJ, club lights and random guys firing torches into the air. And almost every fight is staged at some elaborate club-like or carnivalish set up. Long gone are the fights set in dingy basements, abandoned warehouses and inside a ring of cars with their headlights turned on. Instead Bone breaks bones at Club Paris, right there on the dance floor. And it does not look like it would be fun to get straight jump-kicked in the face with one of his big old Timberland boots.One of the things that kind of stood out in this movie (besides White's propensity for kicking people in the face) is director Ben Ramsey's approach to the violence. There are more than a handful of moments where a shot during a fight scene will be from the point of view of the person being pummeled, usually as the sound gets murky and the picture gets fuzzy, putting the viewer in the position of the receiver of the violence. Did Mr. Ramsey intend to make the viewer truly think about the horror and consequences of such an intense violent act? If so, why is the rest of it set to ridiculous rock music and edited like a music video? Ahhhh, the decades long conundrum of violence in art. Meanwhile, there were also several instances of people taking a couple of hits to the face off screen, and when the camera cuts to the aftermath, they are far more beaten and bloody than the beating implied. Perhaps there was a Karo syrup sale. But other than the obviously dubious messages about violence (pretty much solves everything, kids!), Blood and Bone has everything you would want in a cool action movie. It is kind of sad that action movie fans would have to go to the direct to video market for fare like this (especially with fight scenes that are filmed with steady cameras and mid to wide shots, instead of all shaky close up), but at least this movie gives us all hope that there might be a few more gems out there, ready for us to watch.