Arena (2011)

What makes it different from others?

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I have a feeling that when the script was first pitched, it may have been trying to make a point about how people from 'the video game generation' are desensitised to violence in the media and disconnected from it when it is viewed over the internet. Maybe this point is still lurking somewhere within the finished film; it is difficult to tell. What I do know is that if you happily sit through this mire of senseless bloody violence, probably you are already desensitised and disconnected in the way described. This is a fairly revolting film with no entirely sympathetic characters within it and has almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever.Having watched it I felt about the same as if I'd stepped in dog dirt that someone had deliberately placed on a footpath.

I always knew this would be some dumb action crab, but hey that is what we want right..? The idea is kind of cool, put a bunch of men into an arena, and force them to fight to their death. Then I realized, that it is based on the idea of the Hunger Games. (The Hunger Games is a book I read some time ago) That is also about a reality show, where there are chosen 1 boy and 1 girl between 12 and 18 to fight in an arena until a single victor remains.The idea of Arena is stolen from the Hunger Games books.If you want to see the real deal, watch The Hunger games. It is more deep, and original. But it is also (unfortunately) a teenage movie, where all the blood is cut out. (takes some of the fun out of it)See Arena if you absolutely must, but really I'd just pass.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning In a futuristic world where people watch and vote for on-line battles to the death, David Lord (Kellan Lutz) is an all star football player who has everything going for him until his beautiful girlfriend is killed in a car accident. With his reason for living gone, he finds himself drunk and desperate in a Mexican bar, where a chance encounter finds him thrust into the world of the online fighting, run by the sadistic Logan (Samuel L. Jackson.) As he fights for survival, Lord hatches a cunning plan to break free and bring down Logan's brutal empire.Samuel L. Jackson is certainly one of the more curious of the Hollywood A listers. A late starter on the scene, and certainly not one of the young and beautiful crowd now, his name on a poster can still pretty much guarantee a big box office opening weekend with the right publicity and appraisal. He possesses an undeniable charisma and style that still makes him distinctive as an actor and meant he was always destined to make it big one day. Yet, when artistic credibility is not at the top of his agenda, he seems an actor who's willing to sell himself out for an easy pay cheque on whichever piece of limited release/straight to DVD bunkem that comes along, of which category Arena falls into quite easily.Aiming for a Running Man style clever satire of the way television/online media is heading, Jonah Loop's utterly style over substance offering simply revels in it's own ridiculousness, becoming ever more over the top and far fetched as it goes along and seeming to compensate by way of a load of brutal, nonsensically over the top blood and gore delivered with a minimum of subtlety or taste. Jackson himself tries his best and tries to inject the hopeless corpse with some of his flair and delivery, but he really shouldn't have bothered. Lutz is little more than the average all brawn no charisma clowns Hollywood seems to pass off as actors these days, while the rest of the supporting cast just go through the motions as you can with this sort of thing.It would have been one thing if Arena had been a beautiful mess of a film. As it is, it's just quite a garish and unpleasant one. *

Well, you've seen it all before, it's not a new concept but it's still pretty interesting. I sat through the whole movie without any problems at all. Sure, some things were pretty stupid like that an infamous mass murderer wouldn't have more security or that you cannot possibly survive the amount beating the main character receives.I liked the movie but unfortunately it was too average. The acting is nothing to complain about but the characters are pretty boring. Samuel L. Jackson gives us a typical villain and Kellan Lutz gives us the usual hero, nothing special on that front.I liked Daniel Dae Kim's character but he had a too small a role. It had every better if they had developed his character more then I would care a lot more about the people who died. There are lots of people who die but I did not think I really cared it was unfortunate and something that they could have worked more with.This is by no means comparable to Hunger Games/BR, but give it a shot if you just want some pretty OK entertainment.