Death Warrior

About a third of the way into Death Warrior, a direct-to-DVD action opus advertised as "The world's top Mixed Martial Arts fighters in a hard-hitting feature film," our snarling hero, Reinero (Hector Echavarria), fends off a seduction attempt by three topless, thong-clad women with breasts so silicone-pumped that even Russ Meyer might suggest toning it down a little. Later, one of the villains is seen frolicking in a pool with several more unidentified, naked lovelies, with the camera lingering lovingly on their enormous, rock-hard breasts. Now, I like gratuitous nudity in my direct-to-video MMA films as much as the next guy, but it's scenes like these ― free of context, common sense and any erotic tension ― that make me feel personally insulted by the filmmakers. What, do they think it's this easy to get me off? Ah, but these scenes make up only a small fraction of this imaginatively titled film, in which Reinero is an MMA champion just two fights away from retirement whose wife is injected with a deadly poison by the evil Ivan (Nick Mancusco). Reinero must take part in a series of deadly underground MMA fights if he wants his wife to live. Even Eamon Glennon's run-of-the-mill screenplay, packed with hilarious clichés like "We may have awakened a sleeping giant" and "The only rule is there are no rules" deserves better than Echavarria's stiff, awkward lead performance, and his tendency to deliver lines as if learned phonetically. And while one wouldn't expect much from a director whose next movie is slated to star Pauly Shore (Brand Dead ― watch for it in 2010), Bill Corcoran's shakey-cam aesthetic painfully botches the only thing anyone would rent this for: the fight scenes. DVD extras include a few worthless documentaries and interviews, including one with MMA fighter Rashad Evans, who says, "My dream was always to make a movie... but then as I kinda learned a little bit more, I became a little intimidated, I learned it was very hard to do." Now, if only Bob Corcoran could have this epiphany.