Fighter: A Documentary
Posted by Tommy Hackett on December 20th, 2008
This MMA documentary came out a few years back to a hint of fanfare, reportedly having a nice showing at some domestic film festivals. My hope watching it was to catch a bit of quality film making and maybe a bit of quality MMA action, or behind the scenes footage, along the way.
Sadly, I didn’t get much of either.
Most of Fighter’s 60 minutes follows Randy Couture from his Octagon debut to his 2001 victory over Kevin Randleman. It’s not a bad primer for his career, but it also doesn’t dig too deep. We learn Randy’s game plans for the Borge, Belfort, and Randleman bouts. He pays Enson Inoue a compliment or two. Then-wife Tricia shows how Randy folds his socks and how the prefight video of Borge scared her as she sat in the “red neck” section at UFC 13. We get the idea that Randy’s a basically nice guy who has this weird job where he beats people up… but as Matt Serra might say, we’ve been here before. It’s enough to fill about fifteen minutes but it drags a lot longer than that, and is particularly weighed down by segments featuring arguments in favor of MMA’s existence that seem particularly dated.
Its other segments run hot & cold. Couture’s former trainer Ricco Chiapparelli is profiled in one of the more memorable scenes, going from the wrestling mats to a modeling agency. We’re in less familiar territory here, as his agent gets frustrated about Ricco missing work over a black eye. Ricco’s “surfs up” mellow is a nice contrast to his intense training footage too.
A couple of guys making their debuts at IFC pop up, as does a female MMA veteran. Of the three, the guy who looks totally lost is the most memorable. He mumbles out some cliches about testing himself, and then gets his ass kicked. It’s not that often that failure is portrayed so vividly in a documentary, but hey, it’s life. Good for this guy for having the guts to give MMA a try, and good for him for deciding to do something else, too.
What really kills Fighter is that it just isn’t filmed terribly well. It’s shaky and generally just looks cheap. It can be fun in its own ways, though. It was completed as ZUFFA seemed full of promise, just getting the UFC back on cable, and running in Las Vegas. Dana White says it’s “ready to take off” in a good interview segment. He was as right about that as he was wrong about his hairstyle back then. I had forgotten how Dana with a full head of hair was a dead ringer for Paul Ruebens. Ouch.
It’s available On Demand through my cable system for $3 or so, and isn’t the worst way to spend an hour. I feel for anyone who saw that Fighter won something at a film festival and spent $30 to get this shipped though.