![]() More 'repellent, brain-numbing bilge' then.obviously the first, direct to DVD sequel to 2005's Green Street did well enough that some bright spark decided a second instalment was needed, with martial arts star Scott Adkins in the lead role. But along the way, he finds everything is not as it seems. ![]() Determined to find out who is responsible, he returns back to his old stomping ground and sets about trying to turn the new 'firm' from flabby, beer swilling no hopers to the top boys they once were. Even Gigandet gets a touch of backstory, but most of what you need to know about Ryan is written on his face - the fact that he looks so much like Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden can't be a coincidence.STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Danny (Scott Adkins) turned his back on football violence long ago, and now devotes his life to mixed martial arts fighting, until he learns of the death of his little brother. But Hauty gives his stock characters some shading and most of the cast rise to the opportunity, which means it's possible to care about them –- the brief montage of an exhausted Margot cleaning and doing laundry, for example, makes her something more that the mom who just doesn't get it. ![]() But he needs Roqua more than Roqua needs him, and embarks on the path leading to the inevitable mano a mano with his nemesis.Ĭhris Hauty's screenplay doesn't miss a cliche, and the many scenes of buff, bare-chested boys with their legs locked around each other's necks will delight some viewers and make others snicker uncomfortably. Rebellious Jake instinctively resists Roqua's mind-body approach to martial-arts training: "Was that the grasshopper speech?" he asks sarcastically after Roqua's first lesson in mental discipline. So natural born sidekick/victim Max (Evan Peters) introduces him to mixed-martial-arts master Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou), who runs the 365 Combat Club. Ryan uses his girlfriend, Baja (Amber Heard), to rope Jake in, and "natural born brawler" though Jake may be, his first bout with Ryan ends in a humiliating beatdown. But viral video of the football fight puts him on the radar of smirking sadist Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet, of TV's The O.C.): Ryan and his jaded, obscenely wealthy friends get their kicks competing in brutal underground fights, and they're always looking for fresh meat. Dropped into a new school mid-semester, Jake does his best to melt into the background all he wants is to be left alone with his guilt and seething anger. Freedom from taunts –- both real and imagined - might stop him from getting into fights and scrapes with the law: Jake's last game back home ended in a spectacular on-field brawl. Tennis prodigy Charlie can train at a prestigious sports center, and Jake, a talented football player, will no longer be the object of small-town scrutiny: No one in Orlando will know that his alcoholic dad (David Zelon) died in a car crash with Jake in the passenger seat. Newly widowed Margot Tyler (Leslie Hope) moves her sons, 17-year-old Jake Tyler (Sean Faris, who bears an occasionally distracting resemblance to Tom Cruise) and 10-year-old Charlie (Wyatt Smith), from Iowa to Orlando, Florida, in hopes that they can all make a fresh start. This unlikely hybrid of THE KARATE KID (1984) and FIGHT CLUB (1999) is formulaic and derivative, but sufficiently well made to work as both teen-angst melodrama and bone-rattling brawl picture.
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