Never Back Down: Revolt review – oddly empowering woman-a-mano combat | Film

Here is a brutally violent however oddly empowering story of trafficked girls compelled to kick the hell out of one another or else get despatched to an Albanian brothel. (Pity poor Albania, which will get chosen to be the film-makers’ concept of the worst potential place ever to be in a brothel.) It’s a part of a pulpy, under-the-radar movie franchise sequence that revolves round unlawful, or semi-legal, struggle golf equipment and combined martial arts (MMA) bouts that often pit males in opposition to their buddies and fellow athletes. Their USP is hardcore hand-to-hand fight, with a number of crunchy foley work offering the sounds of pounded flesh, whereas nonetheless celebrating athletic prowess, loyalty to family and friends and a type of gladiatorial honour.

This newest instalment serves up extra of the identical, however with girls doing a lot of the punching, stabbing and roundhouse kicks to the top; there are additionally two girls within the screenwriter and director’s chairs, Audrey Arkins and Kellie Madison respectively. The heroine is Chechen refugee Anya (Olivia Popica), who’s hoping to get a nursing diploma and lives in a tiny flat together with her fierce however dim MMA-fighter brother Aslan (Tommy Bastow). When Aslan, the twit, fails to throw a struggle like he’s informed, the siblings discover themselves in debt to evil posh woman Mariah (Brooke Johnston, channelling Ghislaine Maxwell). Mariah persuades Anya, a scrapper in her personal proper, to participate in some personal bouts for the delectation of sadistic wealthy males who pays much more to look at fairly women beat the daylights out of one another. In fact, it seems to be a entice and the ladies are all locked up with one another in a jail and threatened with the aforementioned Albanian brothel possibility in the event that they don’t cooperate. However plucky Anya begins planning an escape.

Pulpy nonsense, to make certain, however, one way or the other, that is eminently watchable, and it’s a reduction there’s no sexual abuse proven, even when the potential of it exists. Furthermore, it’s attention-grabbing and type of candy that there’s no love curiosity for Anya to moon over. As an alternative, essentially the most important relationships within the movie are between her and her brother, after which later between the ladies locked up within the makeshift jail, who resolve to cease combating one another and work collectively to overthrow the patriarchy – sorry, overthrow their traffickers. The metaphor is baked into the story whichever manner you slice it.