Shadow Glories (2001) Reviews

• Action with brains.

  Ashlevine2004-08-11

  A very interesting look at kick boxing world. The film follows a broken hearted old boxer journey to reunite with his true love that he once sacrificed foolishly. On his road he encounters and befriends a female kick-boxer with high ambitions to become the world champion. Again, he follows the wrong path when he accepts her invitation to become her trainer. A very well made film. Some the images are first class. The fighting scenes are brilliant. The one thing I would have revised were some long scenes that seemed to go on a little longer than necessary but otherwise this is a very mature film don with passion and intelligence.

• Half way film

  Artemis-92005-04-10

  This film is neither the best of the best, as other users have posted until now, nor the very poorly directed and acted film most external reviewers say. The script has a number of scenes that will make you remember similar scenes from Rambo films (as far as boxing and bloody action goes), and the 2005 Oscar winning Million Dollar Baby (as far as drama is concerned). Sure, the people here are amateurs, in comparison with the bigger names and bucks behind the other productions, but they do quite well. You can't reject a film like this just because it has faults. I had read so many put-down reviews that I risked watching the film, and I found it interesting, and active, and not as patronizing to women in martial arts as most of the other stuff - though even here there is a lady doctor in the end giving us the conservative viewpoint that boxing can severely hurt your brain, and the innuendo is... if you're female. I did not like the start of the film, but if you keep our attention after you think the film ends, you'll understand it. The director even managed a couple of surprises in the end! In this sort of story, it is not usual. Even they are not as poignant and effective as those in Million Dollar Baby, they help make this work worth seeing. Recommended to feminists, action fans, kick-boxing fans (these can't expect much realism, though).

• It seems only very specific audiences will warm to The Fight.

  tarbosh220002013-08-28

  Simon Penn (Sandler) is a terminally depressed former kickboxer and now trainer. He feels a lot of sadness and regrets about his life as a fighter, and one of which is the dissolution of his relationship with his wife Jenny (Amendola). He tries to channel his negative feelings into positive ones by training and mentoring children. His partner running the dojo is a woman named Cathy Jean "CJ" Keyes (Isenberg). Because of traumas in her past, she decides to put herself to the ultimate test: fighting a man in the ring. But not just any man, the brutal Killer Kuzinski (Denney), a man who has killed two men in the ring, and who has a tumultuous past with none other than Simon. So she trains hard and both she and Simon fight their inner demons along the way. Then fight day arrives. What happens next will change everyone's lives forever. Who will win THE FIGHT? The Fight is an interesting little movie. It's highly dramatic, even melodramatic at times, and feels like it potentially could have been a play. It seems like it was made by people more interested in creating high drama than a Martial Arts film. For a low-budget independent movie about broken people trying to find solace in a harsh world, and using Martial Arts as a vehicle to do that, The Fight does stand out among the myriad Meathead movies. Just the fact that the title of the movie was changed from Shadow Glories - which is a more evocative and appropriate title - to the dumbed-down, bland and forgettable "The Fight" tells you all you need to know, really. The movie seems to be a labor of love from all involved, especially Marc Sandler. We were unfamiliar with his work prior to seeing this. He resembles James Gandolfini and always tilts his head down. It's mainly during his overly-heartfelt voice-over narration that the movie seems like it's trying too hard to be gritty, or just trying too hard in general. Plus at almost two hours, the movie is far too long and overstays its welcome. There's only so much goodwill this movie can hope to have, and by trying our patience with an extended running time, it expends its capital with the audience. How much time are we supposed to want to spend with these troubled people and their sad lives? Fans of more traditional action movies (like us) will find the pace slow, and the copious use of slow-motion only slows things down to a crawl even more. But the movie predated Million Dollar Baby (2004) by a solid three years, and Sandler (who we are guessing isn't related to Adam...or maybe just hoping) has a great yell. Killer Kuzinski, not to be confused with Killer Kowalski, or Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, is an appropriately evil and heartless man, unafraid to be put in the impossible position of fighting a woman in an exhibition bout. If he wins, he looks like a jerk, if he loses, he was beat by a girl. But perhaps CJ's mighty cry - from a crowded audience - of "I can beat you!!!", which he somehow heard from the ring, really got to him. A movie highlight occurs when two elderly men in Karate Gi's have a conversation. They don't seem like guys that would be wearing those outfits or be in a dojo. It looks like two grandfathers named Sid and Morty and they should be at a deli discussing Matlock. It's a funny scene, watch out for it. Shot in Lewiston, Maine, The Fight is something of an oddity. There's too much drama for your standard Punchfighter (or almost-Punchfighter), but too much hand-to-hand combat for patrons seeking a standard drama.

• Flawed, pretentious and unbelievable

  gridoon2006-09-28

  "Shadow Glories" is a movie that wants to make a statement on the negative effects of professional fighting. Unfortunately, it tries to make that statement through pretentious, pseudo-profound dialogue and an increasingly unbelievable story (which I am now going to SPOIL): apparently we're supposed to buy that the heroine, who pretty much just entered the world of pro fighting, can not only defeat but also kill in the ring the male kickboxing champion of North East America, who even her mentor / trainer couldn't defeat in his prime, and who has been undefeated in all his matches, and who has already killed two guys in the ring. Come on, give us a break here. And at the end she even (rather easily) kills her trainer with her bare hands! (END of spoilers). The fight scenes themselves are obtrusively directed; there are so many cinematic tricks used (slow-motion, b & w photography, etc.) that the fights have no flow or structure to them, we just see hands and feet flying. Good performances by the two leads cannot make up for the film's other flaws. (*)

• Where'd they get that Ref?

  Eric_in_Cincinnati2005-09-20

  The most intense part of this great independent film is when the Referee with the weird, almost overdubbed voice instructs the fighters to fight fair. It's bittersweet, like the performance turned in by Brando in "Waterfront". He looks like a Scotch Charlie Sheen, and is so into his performance that it transitions the scene with an almost Van-Damme-like smoothness. Unlike other 'fight' films, this one seems to have been made with every scene played with fullest heart (maximum return on the indie-budget investment, no doubt). Some films feature such background characters that seem to glow forth from the rest of the picture, as does this referee character. It's hard to overlook such amazing talent, especially when he's given such a pivotal role. His counterpart (another Ref, played by the former mayor of Lewiston, Maine, where this movie was filmed) seems over-the-top in comparison. This films beauty is in how the McLean referee internalizes--keeping his acting to a level of realism very similar to Hopkins' "Lambs" role in 1991. If only this piece of genuine cinema been offered to wider audiences, we might have seen the beginning of a new era of such fight-genre films. Perhaps it will re-emerge. Ten stars.