ARENA (2011)

ARENA (2011)

In 2011 Samuel L Jackson was apparently thinking, (“hmm, you have a straight to video movie for me to do?”) and then promptly took on the role of Logan in this film that has now gone through a few name changes. Anyway the story revolves around a woman who seduces a man at a bar then he suddenly wakes up in a place where he is forced to fight. The only real difference between this movie and the equally ultra-violent THE TOURNAMENT is that we don’t have a decent female lead we care about and all the fights have CGI backgrounds. Samuel is the bad guy who basically directs all this madness which is basically an avenue for entertainment for a fairly large internet fan base that things it’s all just amazing graphics and fake fights. I can say this puppy has a pretty nice twist for an ending (something I definitely did not see coming) and overall isn’t as bad as its delivery.

To explain, the soundtrack is so so, the performances with perhaps the exception of Mr. Jackson are so un-moving it makes what could have been a decent film feel like an empty lifeless shell of a movie. Where we could have had some great fight sequences we get slow moving generic looking efforts that just never really pan out. In your B-movies you have to have at least a level of cheese or lack of effort that matches the intended result. To put it another way, if this movie was a band, it would be that band that has that one dude that tried his guts out but the rest of the band sucked and they never really got anywhere.

Fans of gore (sort of) and maybe SAW might dig this one, but I can recommend it. You’d be better off seeing THE TOURNAMENT which also gets compared to better movies in this genre, the best being THE RUNNING MAN who also managed to fit in some humor, and of course Arnold.

I give this movie a 3 out of 7 because a 4 is just giving it a bit too much credit. Rating Definition – What? This movie was not what you expected. You can not decide if this movie was good or bad but you know there were a few redeemable qualities about it. If you can remember what they were, you might be talked into watch it again.