After languishing on the shelf since 2005, the straight-to-DVD Confessions Of A Pit Fighter is easily one of the worst films of the year. Simply, the film is just awful. A cast of real-life fighters (including former MMA champ Quinton Rampage  Jackson) and a few professional actors (who should have known better) make up the cast of this dreadful film. The perpetually sneering Armand Assante sneers and walks through his clichéd villain role half asleep (and sneering). John Savage is the other decent actor in the cast who plays a nasty parole officer. The rest of the cast includes the hideous and some other non-actors. The film looks cheap and the DVD doesn’t even feature chapter stops.

“Confessions Of A Pit Fighter” is the cliché-ridden tale of an ex-con who wants to live a normal life. His brother is killed in an illegal underground street fight in East Los Angeles. He then goes back into the criminal underworld on a journey of revenge. The fact that the film is cheaply made is a given but would some exciting fights be too much to ask for? This film has no exciting action scenes, terrible acting, and almost zero story.  There’s also a numbing tough guy voiceover narration that makes things even worse.  The DVD has no extra features and a shabby widescreen transfer. At 99 minutes, the film feels like an eternity and is a chore to sit through.

The movie is a dreadful bore with not one exciting action scene of which to speak. The acting is strictly amateur-hour and the film isn’t even worth a rental. Fans of mixed martial arts are better off with David Mamet’s “Redbelt” (and even the hokey “Never Back Down” was better than this dreck) or just watching the real thing. This film has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Paying an actual pit fighter to give you a roundhouse kick to the head would be a much less painful way of wasting your money.

DVD Grade: D-

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