Ringo Duran, (Hector Echavarria) son of famous kickboxer Gracie Duran, is an aging and losing cage fighter.   Fighter by day and bar-back by night, his life has no direction.  When his friend Link (Steven Yaffee) enters him into a Maximum Cage Warriors open competition, he has a chance to turn his life around.   When mobster Sergio Ponzo (Al Sapienza) begins to threaten Ringo for the money he owes him from an earlier loss, the pressure to succeed in the tournament increases.  He must fight through the ranks to save his own life and prove that he is truly unrivaled.

The fights are the reason to watch a film like this and Unrivaled doesn’t disappoint.  In the 108 minute run time there are seven fight scenes.  All are awesome and brutal to watch.  The hits here look solid and the choreography throughout is top notch.  The MMA fighters are naturals at making these scenes look authentic.  Featuring UFC stars Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin, Keith Jardine and Nate Marquardt only add to that realism.  Seeing all of them in action is worthy of multiple viewings. 

In between each of the fights, the plot between Ringo and the other fighters unfold dramatically as Sergio attempts to control the outcome of each match by threats, money, and force.  We also get to see Ringo practicing new tricks as well as get his groove on with his sexy on-screen girlfriend Kara (Jordan Madley).  Before and after each match we get to see some hilarious news commentary from a male and female broadcaster that injects some well thought out humor into this already great action film.  

Unrivaled is marred by some occasional bad dialogue that caused me to chuckle a bit, but didn’t remove me entirely from the film.  It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you’ll know.  Hearing Ringo say “You brought a knife to a bottle fight” is one such case.  Despite that, the cast is full of Hollywood no-names that do an excellent job of delivering what feels like a classic fight movie. 

Video/Audio

Unrivaled is presented in 16X9 widescreen 1.78:1 ratio with English 5.1 DTS-HD master audio.  This film looks great in high-def.  Seeing the sweat beads on each of the fighters as they take the heavy hits is crystal clear.  The action is fast and hard and never blurs.  The colors are extremely vivid and the blacks are equally solid.  The film also puts its incredible soundtrack to good use.  Hearing “Invincible” by Adelita’s Way during the final fight really blew it out of the water and the rest of it doesn’t let up either.  There’s a great collection of tunes here, ranging from heavy alternative bands like Kill the Alarm to soft crooners like NEEDTOBREATHE, and they all fit excellently here.  It’s too bad the soundtrack isn’t available to purchase.  

Special Features

Unrivaled on Blu-ray comes as a single disc collection containing the feature film and the following:

• Behind the Scenes of Unrivaled featurette
• Directing a Chase Scene on the set of Unrivaled featurette
• Interviews with the Figthers Keith Jardine, Rahsad Evans, Forrest Griffin and Nate Marquardt
• Fight Choreography of Unrivaled

The interviews with the MMA fighters are all pretty short, but offer a lot of information on how they felt about their roles in the movie.  It’s interesting to see how conflicting their real life counterparts were compared to their on-screen characters.  The fighters were really nice and incredibly intelligent toward the roles as well as their fighting.   This is easily the best of the special features and offers a closer look at the characters you love to see whoop ass.

The behind the scenes featurette is a quick two and a half minutes of the director talking about how the cast was brought together and how true the film was to its MMA roots.  Warren P. Sonata really loved working on this film and it shows.  The Chase Scene featurette is also short and covers the scene where Link gets hits by the car.  The choreography featurette provides more details on the amazing feats these fighters performed on screen and off.

Overall

Unrivaled does for mixed martial arts what Rocky did for boxing years ago, but turns it up to eleven with more action and much more believable fight scenes.  In addition to the awesome feature, there’s a host of short featurettes that are worth multiple viewings.  This is a must-have for MMA fans and a great fight movie for the rest of us.

ComicsOnline gives Unrivaled on Blu-ray 4.5 out of 5 tap-outs.

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