The Flick

When an undercover detective is set up and imprisoned alongside the convicts he put away, things aren’t what they seem.  Crime lord Anton Vargas (Vinnie Jones – Snatch, Eurotrip) uses his vast fortune to manipulate the system from his cell to get revenge upon the the man who put him away.  Danny (Tony Schiena – The Merchant of Venice) must take part in an underground cage-fighting scene in order to outlast Vargas’s wrath.   With the help of his aging inmate Irving and an agent on the outside, he must survive long enough to bring the crime lord to justice and free his name.   

For the most part, the acting present inLocked Down is worthy, but Tony Schiena as Danny is so over dramatic that I choked back laughter every time he spoke.  It feels like he’s taking cues from Christian Bale in Batman Begins with how gruff he sounds, but he’s nowhere near as believable.  Considering he’s the main character and has the most screen time, it really brought the whole film down for me.  On the plus side, he does his own stunts which end up being the best part about his performance.  He really looks the part with ample size and mass to thrown down against all the MMA fighters included in the film.

The inclusion of Vinnie Jones as the aforementioned Vargas is great, but he really wasn’t given as much screen time as I’d hoped and his character feels rather basic in the end.  He doesn’t offer much in the way of emotion but handles the cockiness of his leadership role rather well.  The addition of Bai Ling as Flores works for the role of the alpha female and she grants a small bit of eye candy that is otherwise lacking in the film. 

The amount of TapouT merchandise tossed around this movie is ridiculous.  Regardless of the situation, someone is ALWAYS wearing a piece of TapouT gear.  The hooker that’s blowing Kirkman in one of the scenes is wearing TapouT sweatpants.  There’s even merchandise not being worn that’s strategically placed throughout.  I understand the need for marketing in a film like this – Hell the entire series is based on a clothing line – but seeing it everywhere like this feels forced and incredibly lame.

Audio and Video

The 1080p High Def 16X9 widescreen 1.78:1 presentation offered on Locked Down on Blu-ray is pretty crisp.  The dreary and dark colors of the prison make the spatterings of blood much more intense, but other than that, there’s not a strong use of color here.  The blacks look solid and I didn’t notice much grain at all during its run time.  A great picture overall.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.  If there’s one thing that the TapouT film series continues to excel at, it’s featuring incredible music woven into the events on-screen.  This round we have tracks by Royal Bliss, 7 Days Away, Like a Storm, and much more.  The title track “Fetish For Fighting” by Potluck is particularly cool and kicks the film off with great intensity.  The rest of the 5.1 English DTS-HD Master Audio track will put your speakers through a workout.  I actually had to turn the volume down on my setup a full 10 notches because the track was so much louder than I’m used to hearing in other films.   

The disc also features a Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track and English Subtitles for those that require it.

Special Features and Packaging

Locked Downon Blu-ray comes as a single-disc collection in a standard recycle case with the following extras:

• Audio Commentary with Director Daniel Zirilli
• Behind the scenes featurette
• Fight Choreography featurette
• Interviews with the cast and crew
• TapouT Promos

The fight choreography segment is extremely short and follows the film’s fight choreographer Arnold Chon as he tried to make the brutal scenes as realistic as possible.  The behind the scenes featurette runs about four minutes, doesn’t really offer a lot in the way of content, and features incredibly poor sound quality. It has some small interview segments, but is more promotional material than anything.  The interviews are the longest running special feature segments on the disc and contain a mix of behind the scenes clips and interview material.  Each of them runs close to three minutes with a lot of content focused on what it was like working with director Daniel Zirilli.  

Overall

Rather than get better as time has gone on, I think that the TapouT series took a step backward with Locked Down.  Featuring the worst acting in the series so far, I had a hard time keeping myself engaged in the film.  The fight scenes are still great along with the soundtrack, but having to sit through the rest sucked.  MMA fans will like seeing their favorite fighters once again, but it’s only worth a rental for everyone else.  
ComicsOnline gives Locked Down on Blu-ray 2.5 out of 5 shots to the forehead.
 

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