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Reviews
Jiu Jitsu (2020)
There was an attempt.
Disclosure: I generally enjoy Tony Jaa and Nic Cage movies regardless of budget.
It's rather generous to call this a Nic Cage movie, as he was not in it all that much, and his dialogue might as well have been improvised from reading the summary of the movie on IMDB. You can't prove otherwise. In contrast, Frank Grillo's dialogue sounded like he was simply told to recycle lines from other movies he's been in.
But we're not here for Shakespeare...so how's the action? It's passable. There was occasionally interesting choreography, the martial artists were competent at what they do, and there were a lot of guys with guns in melee range. I'm not even sure it was satisfying at any point because all of the grunts were so ridiculously outclassed at every turn, they were trash mobs. I don't think the heroes even gained experience from defeating them. There was some interesting cinematography for a few minutes, until it seemed like they moved back on to Unit One and/or the interesting camera person was fired due to competence.
I'm still not sure who I was supposed to be rooting for. I'm not saying that likeability is a prerequisite for saving the world, but characters die and you'll forget about them 5 minutes later, like the other characters have. Characters live and don't come back until later to make zero difference in even their own lives. Just know that you will be unburdened of feeling any different after the movie than you were before seeing it.
See it if you like Tony Jaa, Nic Cage, martial arts, unintentional hilarity, bad special effects, and/or are high or drunk or are hatewatching it. Otherwise, I will happily serve as a warning to others. 3/10 for decent martial arts and the alien.