The Circuit-2002

Director : Jalal Merhi
Producer : 

Writer : Glen G. Doyle

Genre: MMA /action /Drama

Running time : 91 mins

Rating : R

Cast : Oliver Gruner, Loren Avedon, Billy Drago

   The Circuit is another low budget mma action movie about another one of those underground fighting circuits. (yep, they are now called Circuits as opposed to PITS). Shoddily directed and poorly written and under acted by most, Olivier Gruner stars as Dirk Longstreet, an ex-Circuit fighting champ who is now a college professor. (this is a common theme in most Gruner films) and you guessed it, he finds he has to return to the Circuit to search for his now missing brother, who has fallen prey to the evil gambling clutches of the Circuit leaders. This is a knockoff of pretty much every other fighting tournament movie,  except, as bad as other movies of this genre are, at least they pull off the formula.

        Meanwhile, a young sexy female reporter tries to get the scoop on Dirk's past. A promising beginning to a tired and true formula quickly deteriorates midway through the movie. Almost every secondary storyline is poorly developed and really just unneeded. Gruner is a great looking fighter on screen, but his "nice guy" saying "I don't wanna fight", staple is getting old for this reviewer, however he does possess better acting ability than most lead actors of this movie genre. Gruner seems to fall prey to the Van Damme syndrome of getting beaten to a pulp before rising to the occasion with brief flurries of energy and laying the law down to all the badasses in the story and I've never been a big fan of this style of filming climactic final fights, although its Van Dammes staple. Gruner is just picking the wrong scripts and needs to lay off the (vann damme style of Chorography) He has a couple of shoddy fight scenes early on in the movie in a bar and especially in the park scene.

           The training sequences (or fight montages) , are a staple of the "fighting tournament" B-movie, However, the training scenes with Billy Drago brings little of anything new to the film, and Drago himself is wasted in a good guy role. What really destroys this movie are the slow pacing,(dragging) scenes, bad editing, scenes that look misplaced and the terrible fight scenes in the "circuit.", Jalal Merhi, the director, is an actual fighter himself, so I would expect better fight sequences from him. Despite some good flying kicks from some fighters, most of the fight effects turn out to be disproportionately mismatched sound edits. Several of Gruner's martial arts moves are really just common wrestling holds.  The big climactic fight is disappointing and unsatisfying too, we are left with an unfinished fight ........right when we expect a badass punishing finish. It just trickles out! This is a fatal flaw by the director Merhi. Only watch this, if you're a die-hard martial arts movie fanatic, and don't expect anything groundbreaking, don't expect any explosive action, but do plan on some cheesiness.

4/10 Stars