CERT: 15 | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (VOD), JANUARY 4TH (DVD, BLU-RAY)
Every six years, a team of expert fighters comes together to fend off alien invaders using the ancient art of jiu jitsu. Yeah, like Space Jam, but with martial arts instead of basketball. But when their best fighter (Alain Moussi) takes a blow to the head and loses his memory, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Can his old pals and mentor Wylie (Nicolas Cage!) restore the meathead’s mojo before it’s too late, or is humanity doomed? And what the hell is My Name is Earl’s Crab Man doing here?
One can’t fault Jiu Jitsu for its ambition – a sci-fi martial arts picture that brings together such notable movie badasses as Tony Jaa, Frank Grillo, Rick Yune and the one and only Nicolas Cage… and Nicolas Cage’s stunt double. While director Dimitri Logothetis doesn’t take the story too seriously, the action is played straight, and its fight sequences are impressively frantic. It’s essentially Predator, if the Predator was an expert martial artist.
But what separates the bad movie aesthetic from a plain bad movie? There’s a line, and, intentionally or not, the film crosses it – the overreliance upon CGI blood, a mixed-bag cast, and charisma-free leading man. Cage hams it up in classic Cage fashion, easily stealing the film from its star, and getting all of the best lines. But the rest of the performances are one-note and charmless (or, in the case of Eddie Steeples, annoying). For Cage completists and fans of ’80s action, it’s worth a shot, but Jiu Jitsu is a hash of badly managed ideas, technical flaws and Predator rip-offs.
