Sanctioned to Die (2011) Reviews

• If such a film exists in how to make the worst film ever, you have found it.

  jackmeat2015-07-11

  My quick rating - 0,3/10. Rating a movie such as this is very difficult. Being someone who has seen a TON of movies, seeing something this awful and then attempting to pick out what should be pointed out is the hard part. I am not a huge fan of ripping a movie to shreds but I have to here. Story (haha, sorta) is a supposed martial arts expert (more on that later) attempts to infiltrate some worldwide gambling ring betting on underground fights. OK, we have seen a similar idea many times, but I'll give that a pass. This person along with everyone in this movie seems to never acted in their entire lives. I am not expecting some Oscar quality tears or anything, but don't sound like the worse speakers from the WWE reading a script written in a foreign language. Is that part hard to ask for? Back to the martial arts expert though, who loses a friend and goes into this big tournament thingie. There is not a single person in this movie that could fight out of a ziplock bag when equipped with a knife and a blow torch. Putting that aside, the choreography of each fight (which are so few anyway you may forget about them) is so poor it would make a 6 year old sad after videotaping the talent show at school. Now since I have already had to point out this many flaws, I also must point out the 2 instances where obvious cast members were left in a camera shot meaning whoever edited this movie was also completely inept. Scenes to make you go "HMMM" For some unknown reason you just drive around and get dropped off for each fight. OK? But the chick that takes you for some unknown reason decides it is time for sex? Stupid. The other supposed martial arts guy vanishes without a possible cause (minus trying to get into the tourney). DUMB. The least could go on and on but really should the review even be this long? The WOW factor on this piece of trash is so high it almost makes it worth seeing but I will leave that decision of torture up to every individual that reads this. Good luck if you do decide to (which the only reason would have to be morbid curiosity in how bad it really is. Oh, and to the worthless cast members that came to IMDb and pimped this out to get the rating as high as 5.4, you really should be ashamed.

• A testosterone fantasy

  rushknight2015-08-10

  It's a mantasy. One lone hero, lots of fighting and grunting, killing, violence, hot sexy women, sex, money and slick cars. The basic story idea, that some devious villain is sponsoring an underground fighting syndicate, has been done many times before.. and certainly has been done better. The plot idea is a sound one, and honestly one that resonates with a type of viewing audience. As a kid, I grew up on "Bloodsport" so I know a little of the feeling. There's a lot of fun movies with the same plot. In this particular reiteration of the idea, the fun is not here. I suspect that the reason is because the writers didn't take the time to fill in the smaller details that would make the plot believable. There are simply too many holes and too many inconsistencies with the real world. As a result the movie doesn't grip you at all, it just leaves you shaking your head. (The biggest question mark for me personally was how the writer expects people to believe that this "fight club" would be an internet sensation when there are NO CAMERAS filming anything anywhere. What are people watching exactly? Security footage?) In addition, the action is routinely halted by the director's insistence that the hero needed to be developed as a character. Normally I would applaud this. A simplistic character can be boring, but this time it did not come off well. The hero begins as an angry warrior, a Don Quixote, someone who is genuinely unhappy with the world and wants to change it by battling evil wherever he finds it. But just like Don Quixote, he is completely unable to express exactly what that evil might be. Thus, he comes off as unstable, and violently so. He is constantly speaking out a bunch of rhetoric about the world's twisted and greedy leaders and such, but never names any particular politician, or even a political side. He gripes about street crime, and proves himself to be no better than a thug with a temper. He talks about saving people but ends up killing other fighters (this is legally murder, by the way). Don't even get me started on how he tosses money to teenage prostitutes telling them to "run away", which is very noble but also absolutely stupid. As a hero, he is wanting in every respect except for muscles. He's got those. But that's just not enough to make him interesting, and in a movie like this that is ALL about the hero, if he doesn't get interesting, people stop watching. Unfortunately for the viewer, the hero does get some development time, but it is unclear exactly what it means to the hero. He didn't really seem to change at all. Getting to specifics, the filming was actually done fairly well, the director preferred to get close in the fighting and the choreography was not quite as bad as the other reviewer suggests. The fight scenes were carefully matched to avoid vicinity errors (when the placement of objects is inconsistent from scene to scene), which was appreciated. However, the fight routines themselves were not very original and felt predictable. The sound was atrocious. The poor balance between background noises and the music was very distracting, and I got really tired of people speaking at different volumes based on their closeness to the camera. A qualified sound editor would have been able to work on this. The the film's real struggle was with the acting. And here I must concur with the only other review that is currently here. Every character was terrible. The sexy vixen was trying really hard to sound sexy every time she said a line, the police chief was so inarticulate that he was barely understandable, and the hero himself constantly sounded as though he didn't really understand exactly why he was where he was.. all of them left me frustrated as a viewer. I'm giving this a 2, it was not the worst movie I have ever seen, but it also just wasn't fun to watch at all. It was pretty boring throughout.