Mark Reviews Movies: EMBATTLED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 19, 2020

How else could this story have turned out? That's the thought that keeps running through one's mind watching Embattled, a tough and no-nonsense film about an aspiring mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter who ultimately ends up in the ring with his champion father. The climactic brawls of most movies involving a fighting sport are typically meant to be inspiring, but director Nick Sarkisov plays this one with the weight of a Greek tragedy. It's not about winning or obtaining a championship belt or proving oneself to the world. This fight is entirely about emotional catharsis, both for the characters and for us.

Sarkisov and screenwriter David McKenna take their time to arrive at that final brawl, and it makes all the difference. We get to know the father—Cash Boykins (Stephen Dorff), a loudmouthed and egocentric man, who has taken all of the wrong lessons from his rise to the top of the MMA world—and the son—Jett (Darren Mann), who hasn't known his father in some time, following his parents' messy divorce, but desperately wants that bond to re-form.

Cash takes Jett to a big fight in Las Vegas, and after the father devastates his prone opponent to win yet another fight, he wants the son to keep the party going with him. When Jett points out that he has school and other obligations, there's more than a tinge of resentment in Cash's attitude. The old man will make time for his boy, but it had better be his time. His time matters.

There's little denying that Cash, who's mean and cruel in and out of the ring, has some blustering charm to him, and that charm has taken him far. It has gotten him tons of fans, beyond his impressive fighting record, which only has one recorded loss. It has made him the highest-paid athlete in the sport, and the powers that be in the league will give Cash just about anything he requests, although Cash isn't the kind of guy to make requests. They're always framed as demands.

If it seems as if he won't get what he wants, Cash seems to fall back on a more aggressive tactic: a threat. It's not always framed as violence, though, but we can see in his eyes that he knows that everyone else knows that, if it came down to it, he'd have the upper hand if matters did come to violence.

As for Jett, played by Mann with a fine sense of internal conflict and overriding decency, he's a good kid, who turns 18 at some point in this story. He's about to finish high school and working to better his grades, even though he's convinced that he'll be following his father's footsteps. Jett's time outside of school and training at Cash's gym is dedicated to his younger brother Quinn (Colin McKenna, the screenwriter's son), who has a rare developmental disorder. Jett helps his brother, assures him, and defends him. For his part, Cash can barely look at his second son.

There's a little of the old man in Jett, though, such as when he learns that his mother Susan (Elizabeth Reaser) has taken a job as a server at a fancy restaurant. Jett wants her to quit as a matter of pride. He doesn't frustrate easily, but when he does, he falls back on demands and threats of violence, too.

For a long time, the film proceeds in such a manner—giving us details about each of the men, showing us how distinct each one is from the other, making us worry that Jett is one wrong move, one wrong decision, or one bad day away from following the example of his father too closely. Like the best sports movies, the sport here is primarily background material. The characters matter above all else. Even when we do see a fight, such as when Jett gets a chance for a professional bout, it's framed as an opportunity to develop these characters. In the case of the fight against an opponent much stronger and more accomplished than Jett, it's a chance to see how far Cash's determination to teach his eldest son a "lesson" is willing to go. He almost takes a twisted pleasure in knowing how badly Jett will be beaten and seeing the results.

It might sound a bit corny when put so bluntly, but this story, which does arrive at a big battle between the father and son, is framed as a much deeper fight: between Jett's tendency to let love and compassion overrule his baser instincts and Cash's inability to see his life as anything other than a fight. Cash is nothing more than a bully—an angry, resentful, and sometimes hateful man. Dorff plays him with frightening conviction and, most importantly, with a complete lack of self-awareness. This is a man so set in his ways, his attitudes, and his certainty of always being right that he has no comprehension of what the consequences of his ways, attitudes, and certainty are and have been.

Some of those characteristics Cash received from his own father, who abused him, and the turning point here is Jett's gradual remembrance of his father's own abuse (It's quite terrifying) and sudden realization that it hasn't stopped—and likely won't stop. The film sets up the fight and becomes a bit more formulaic as Jett trains with Claude (Saïd Taghmaoui), the only fighter to defeat Cash. Sarkisov and McKenna, though, have laid the groundwork firmly within these characters and the conflict between them, so it hardly matters in the end.

The actual fight is grueling, both physically (Sarkisov lets us see the whole bout, in all its punishing and bloody horror, and slowly eliminates the outside world, until it's just the two men) and emotionally. We expect the former, but the latter only happens because Embattled does take its time, does invest itself in these characters, and does establish the stakes of this brawl as so much more than winning or losing. It's a devastating and much-needed purging of emotions.

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