Brock Lesnar is a former professional wrestler ... enough said about the "sport"of UFC?
Dana White is a great marketer, but does his vision have legs?
Brock Lesnar won his super heavyweight comeback fight at UFC 116 this weekend, which probably thrills you if you enjoy kicking puppies.
Really, that remains the audience for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which combines the worst of boxing's bloodthirst with professional wrestling's staged preening and adds some boring mat gyration, grappling in for good measure.
It doesn't matter how much ESPN tries to push Lesnar on America — and did the masters of sports over-promotion ever try on this holiday Monday, putting Lesnar on SportsCenter for an exclusive interview and seemingly every other network platform — ultimate fighting is destined to remain the domain of yahoos with money to burn on overpriced pay-per-view cards. It's still a very niche market, no matter how much UFC president Dana White tries to insist otherwise.
More sports outlets are covering UFC than ever before because it's the new overblown craze — just like hundreds of papers beefed up their NASCAR coverage years ago, only to quietly scale back more and more as stock car racing's ratings continue to sink. That is UFC's future as well.
Lesnar didn't revolutionize mixed martial arts by making a big-man bout interesting. He just showed that America will embrace any dumb event for a while, if it's marketed the right way. Lesnar, a former professional wrestler (enough said?), is probably laughing as hard as anyone at the successful smoke job.
There have been a number of films in the past decade or so that have confronted police brutality and/or corruption, detailing both fictional and real-life events. The seriousness of the topic has mostly kept stories confined strictly to the drama category, but the new film Rebel Ridgedares to take things into the action/thriller genre while still remaining thoughtful about the larger subject at hand.
As the film begins, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) is traveling by bicycle down a country road when he is followed and then crashed into by a police cruiser. Over his objections, the two officers conduct a search of his backpack, where they find a large amount of cash that Terry was going to use to bail his cousin out of jail. Without due cause, the cops confiscate the money and leave Terry to fend for himself.
While clearly upset about his mistreatment and the injustice heaped upon him, Terry continues to try work within the system to get his cousin released, only to be stymied at every turn. Left with no other option, Terry decides to confront the small-town police department, led by Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson). His background in the Marines, especially a certain set of skills he learned there, make him a formidable threat, even in the face of a group of highly-armed men.
Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room), the film is striking in how calm Terry remains, even when he decides to resort to violent means. In his multiple interactions with the police in the first half of the film, he remains in control of his emotions at all times, refusing to give the cops any extra reason to take their anger out on him. This behavior rings true to life, a subtle but strong commentary on the expectations put on Black people in such situations.
With a low-but-pulsating score and a carefully-crafted building of tension, Saulnier gives the audience permission to want to see Terry enact his revenge on the cops. And yet, the film is far from exploitative. At the same time as he’s growing angrier by the minute with the police, he’s working with Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), a court employee, to free his cousin legally. The combination of the two storylines works well, especially when the story takes a turn in the final act.
Saulnier is careful to keep the action in the film relatively realistic. While there are some moments when Terry shows extraordinary abilities, they make sense given the character’s training and never turn him into an unstoppable superhero. Even more pointed is how Terry eschews the use of guns. There are multiple times when picking up a gun is an option, and yet he picks something else every time, a moral code not often seen in films such as these.
Pierre proves to be the perfect actor for this particular role. While he’s big enough to be intimidating and has eyes that seem to pierce the soul, it’s the level-headed demeanor that he brings to the role that makes it a great performance. Johnson has just the right amount of charisma and malevolence for his part, and Robb shows a maturity that may signal the start of the next phase of her career.
Rebel Ridge plays with ideas formed from real life and similar movies to become a stirring film that hits almost all the right notes. It doesn’t necessarily have any answers for the systemic problems it includes in its story, but the righteous anger it provokes make it highly memorable.