MOVIE REVIEW: Female Fight Club aka Female Fight Squad (2018)

A former female fighter returns, all but reluctantly, to the illegal fight scene when her sister gets in trouble with the menacing fight promoter.

Right, when asked to review films you’re sent the blurbs by the PR people about how good the film is.Â These are usually dismissed as the sales talk, like a car sales person, trying to big up a weak engine and throwing stats at you like they really matter.Â For this film it was that Scarlett Johansson’s body double and personal stunt woman Amy Johnston and a team of female stunt people were playing the fighters, and that no other stunt people were used.

I eagerly put on the DVD thinking that this was going to be a 90’s style actioner, brilliant action due to that premise, and I was going to relive the China O’Brien films of my teens.Â Expectation is the curse of my job.Â You would think that stunt people would come up with the most feral fight scenes that you’d imagine, that imagination would take over, and you’d be left panting with the white knuckle fight scenes.

However, and this really got under my skin, the fight scenes were just plain terrible.Â I mean there was no shocks, the punches were tame, the kicks were laboured, and the tension was just nowhere to be seen.

How can a bunch of stunt people in a room fighting be dull?

Anyway the story of the female fighter trying to leave the business behind and the reasons behind it coming back to the punching kicking scene is one we’ve seen before but it’s fine.Â Also some of the performances are good too.Â That’s why this has got a one point five.Â I also think it’s generous.

I have little to say without going full bashing against the film, then we’d be 20 pages deep, if fighting films that are throwbacks to the 90’s or 80’s are your thing you’re going to see what is wrong with this film quicker than anyone else.Â As the finale ramps up I thought that we’d see the fury that was promised from the main character.Â But we don’t.Â My advice is that you use actors for acting and stunt people doing the amazing job that they do best.Â Also maybe make fight scenes with moves that don’t look like pie fights from the silent movie era.Â I personally would avoid this film again.Â But the choice is, as it always is, in your hands.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]