Punch drunk

Action movies make excellent vehicles for compelling novels of the type Bildungsroman. In them, young men - and they are nearly always men - confront their demons and fight their way toward manhood.

In Balzac's day, for instance, it was the ambitious and naive young artist who quit the provinces for the big city in pursuit of success and self-expression. In Fighting - the second film by writer/director Dito Montiel, who debuted in 2006 with A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints - it is Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum), a hunky hick from the sticks newly arrived on the hard streets of New York.

We pick up with MacArthur as he attempts to defend himself against a gang of small-time hustlers who, under the direction of a Fagin-like character named Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard), descend like jackals on the seemingly hapless young man.

When MacArthur makes short work of the gang by resorting to fisticuffs, Boarden, who fancies himself a kind of promoter, takes an interest in the scrappy youth, introducing him to a shady world of underground, no-holds-barred, high-stakes fighting. Along the way, MacArthur falls in love with a shapely cocktail waitress (Zulay Henao), conquers one fearsome opponent after the next and then gambles his future on one final bout with a heavy hitter who has ominous connections to his checkered past.

On the surface, it would seem to be within the wit of even the most hackneyed storyteller to run with a narrative arc like the one we have here. Sadly, Montiel runs his picture right into the ground.  

In a milieu that tends to feature both the exhibition of martial skills and the sharpening of those skills through discipline and sacrifice - think Rocky Balboa ascending the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art - Fighting exhibits neither, relying instead upon the fractured-glass effect of jump cuts and music video editing to distract us from the lack of choreographic ingenuity and character development. What should be a satisfying story about an underdog making good instead becomes a tedious experiment in marrying The Fast and The Furious with The Karate Kid.

The biggest problems are on the page. Montiel's MacArthur is like the proverbial shaggy dog, touted with exposition by the surrounding characters, who sing the praises of his physical abilities while he himself exhibits few if any actual gifts apart from a penchant for sheer dumb luck. So too with Boarden, a soft, worn-out schemer with one shot left in the world who manages to make out in the end by becoming his pupil's dupe - hardly the come-from-behind triumph the audience is undoubtedly looking for, so predictable have the clichés been to this point.

Montiel's script (co-written with Robert Munic) is so riddled with trite tropes and stereotypes - the street thugs peopling Queens, the Bronx and Chinatown are cartoonish in the extreme, a la Walter Hill's The Warriors - that it begins to feel as though Montiel's critical success with the supposedly autobiographical Saints is destined to remain an anomaly.

With the exception of the delightful Altagracia Guzman (the matriarch from 2002's Raising Victor Vargas), Montiel's cast is also a disappointment.

Tatum is evidently Montiel's golden boy, appearing in Montiel's debut film and in his upcoming drama, The Brotherhood of the Rose. It is difficult to guess what Montiel sees in the actor. He is handsome enough for a leading man, but the light in his eyes is of the low-wattage variety. Tatum's background in athletics and dance would seem to lend itself to the role of our titular fighter, but apart from the odd bit of grappling (MacArthur's specialty is wrestling), even his physicality is surprisingly unimpressive.

The usually workmanlike Howard phones in a forgettable performance, the signature aspect being an incessant and gravelly whine. His attempts at streetwise nonchalance come off as soft and sleepy.

As the love interest, Henao has nothing to recommend her apart from the peculiar first name she shares with her character.

Montiel seems to be at a loss in the realm of original fiction. Memoir - his area of expertise - doesn't require the invention of characters who evolve over the course of a story. Real people do it naturally, after all. But evolution is a key element in virtually every good fight film, from Jean-Claude Van Damme to Jackie Chan. A "coming-of-rage" tale - even one as trifling as this - that fails to evoke themes of personal growth and self-improvement is, well, boring. And all the clichés in the action/adventure arsenal can't do anything to help it.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com