Fight Night
	In Stock, Ships Immediately!		DVD: $22.50

		Boxing, MMA, Street Racing, Blood, Female, Hot, Hustle, Fight Club, Million Dollar Baby, Special Sauce, Peace Arch, Outpost, Kansas, Underground, Martial Art, Lesbian, Gay, G Love

Film Overview

Directed By: Jonathan Dillon Written By: Ian Shorr View Official Website	Release Date: 2009-04-14 Running Time: 1:42 Content Rating: R18 (Restricted)	DVD Region: 1 - U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories Media Format: NTSC-DVD Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audio Language(s): English Subtitle Language(s): Spanish
Genres: Action >> Adventure :: Comedy >> Buddies :: Sports >> Boxing Influences: Fight Club, Million Dollar Baby, Girl Fight, Fighting, Never Submit, Rocky // Raging Bull

Synopsis

Michael Dublin is a full-time con man working the underground boxing circuit. A lonely drifter on the run from a past best forgotten, he moves from one scam to another, leaving a trail of enemies in his wake. Dublin invents his best scam yet when he meets Katherine Parker, a female fighter with the skills to take down a man twice her size. In a scheme Dublin calls "fight-rigging, in reverse", the two hit the road working fights in seedy basement bars, abandoned warehouses, and backwoods county fairs. But Dublin's shady past catches up with them and suddenly the stakes are higher - and more dangerous - than they'd ever imagined.

Cast

Katherine Parker: Rebecca Neuenswander | bio
Rebecca Neuenswander launches her acting career with a role that closely mirrors her own life experiences. A born fighter, she trained in Tae Kwon Do throughout her teenage and young adult years. At the age of 19, she won first place in the sparing competition at the world championships.

Rebecca has worked extensively has a model and commercial actress, appearing in campaigns for Nokia, Under Armour and Lee Jeans. She says that her life’s greatest accomplishment thus far has been the creation of the not-for-profit organization H.A.L.O. (Helping Art Liberate Orphans). Rebecca’s work with H.A.L.O takes her around the globe as she conducts art workshops for orphans and delivers aid generated by her fundraising efforts in the U.S.
Michael Dublin: Chad Ortis | bio
Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Chad didn’t begin acting until after college. He cut his teeth on the “black box” stages of Chicago before heading to Los Angeles. Since then, he’s appeared in numerous features, television shows and shorts. Before beginning work on RIGGED, he had never attended a boxing match in his life.
Clark Richter: Kurt Hanover | bio
Kansas City native Kurt Hanover has appeared in several independent features and shorts. His credits include "The Shunned" (Chris Downs, director - produced by Dripping Dead Films), "How To Succeed With Women" and "Xeline" (Jon Weimer, director - produced by Agent Provocateur Films).
Cleveland: John Wilson
Speedy Lenny: Larry Peterson
Lucy: Allison Poccia
Averyk: Garrett Dutton (aka G. Love) | bio
Renowned worldwide for his unique brand of blues music, Garrett (G. Love) has toured the globe doing the one thing he does best—performing Live. From humble beginnings on the streets of Philadelphia, G. Love crashed the music scene in 1994. Since then, he’s played and collaborated with several well-regarded bands and artists including Dave Mathews, Ben Harper, and his close friend Jack Johnson. His videos have received extensive airplay on MTV and VH1 and he’s had several singles break billboard's top 50.

RIGGED is G Love’s silver screen debut. His enormous fan base brings considerable interest to the film.

Crew

Director: Jonathan Dillon | bio
Jonathan began his career directing short films, music videos, and highlight films in a suburban town outside of Kansas City, Kansas. While a student at a local community college, he established the “Cavalier Film Festival” which was the school’s first film festival competition focused on storytelling among young filmmakers.

Jonathan went on to study film at the University of Southern California’s school of Cinema and television. He was recognized by Project Greenlight’s “refreshing filmmakers” competition as one of the top ten young filmmakers in the U.S. He has studied under Mardik Martin (screenplay writer of Raging Bull and Mean Streets), and worked with several notable directors, including Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard) and JJ Abrams (Lost, Mission Impossible III).

While completing post-production of RIGGED, Jonathan finished his schooling at USC and continues to work and live in Los Angeles.
Executive Producer: Jonathan Dillon
Picture Editor: Jonathan Dillon
Producer: Bobby McGee | bio
RIGGED is the second feature length film Bobby McGee has produced. The first was the award winning horror film titled THE EMPTY ACRE, written and directed by Patrick Rea. He’s a graduate of the University of Kansas (film studies) and currently lives and works in Kansas City. While in college he worked on several shorts and won three student film awards (best editing, best picture and best director) in 2005 for his short film Requies. That film went on to win two more awards on the festival circuit.

Bobby owns the feature film production company Invidious Production. He is currently working on several projects including another with writer/director Patrick Rea scheduled to be shot in Kansas in the near future.
Producer: Nick Kimutis
Writer: Ian Shorr | bio
A graduate from the screenwriting program at the University of Southern California, Ian has used his own life experiences and travels as the basis for much of his writing. Getting to stage his own very literal battle-of-the-sexes was exciting for Ian. “In screenwriting, it's not that often that you can let a man and a woman completely go at each other, physically and verbally. The fact that it's a thoroughly uneven fight (a professional talker vs. a professional boxer) only made it more fun to create.”

For RIGGED, Ian says that he took inspiration from award winning screenwriter Shane Black. “I basically copied his formula: take two mismatched buddies (in this case, a straight guy and a gay girl), give them lots of funny/abusive banter, add some inventively sadistic violence, and you're set to go. RIGGED was also inspired by an old roommate of mine, this girl from Salt Lake City, who would box for money on the weekends. She had this idea that we would go on the road together, setting up fight-clubs around the country, with me as her manager. We never got to do it, so I wrote a movie about it.”

Ian’s screenplay for RIGGED was a finalist at the Austin Film Festival screenwriting competition in 2005. He has since gone on to have many other screenplays produced. The most recent, Exempt, was picked up by MGM. He is currently managed by Binderspink and represented by CAA.
Director of Photography: Hanuman Brown-Eagle | bio
Hanu has won over 30 Cinematography awards, including more than 10 Telly awards. His work has screened at the Cannes international film festival and the Los Angeles Film Festival. He has shot over 40 short films and music videos and over 250 commercials. RIGGED is his first feature length film.
Production Company: Outpost Pictures

Bonus Features

Deleted & Extended Scenes
Director Commentary
Theatrical Trailers

Accolades

Awards

Grand Jury Prize
Best Actress - Rebecca Neuenswander
Best Cinematography
Best Feature Film

Festivals

Dances with Films Festival (Los Angeles, CA)
SoCal Film Festival (Huntington Beach, CA)
Action on Film Festival (Pasadena, CA)
Radar Hamburg Film Festival (Hamburg, Germany)

Press Reviews

Mardik Martin (screenwriter "Raging Bull" and "Mean Streets" | show/hide snippet
Fight Night is an exciting story with well-developed characters. The dialogue is quick and witty while unfolding a heart-felt tale.
Dances with Films Festival (Los Angeles) | show/hide snippet
"Powerfully executed, Fight Night delivers you into the explosive world of underground boxing.”
Robert Koehler (Variety) | show/hide snippet
“Before it goes pudgy with a phony feel-good ending, "Fight Night" is a lean and mean saga in the mold of the B programmers of studio yore. Pic centers on a smart-alecky indie promoter who specializes in underground bare-knuckle matches and a feisty gal with a walloping punch and hook who pair up for adventures and revenge on the wildcat fight circuit. Cheesy, funny, bloody and stupid in equal doses, this actioner appears pitch-perfect for North American fests and cablers with a taste for grunge.”
Rob Mars (Athletic Women Blog) | show/hide snippet
Rocky, Fight Club, Million Dollar Baby—you can make comparisons to those three movies, but Fight Night is unique, a new twist in a threadbare genre. Fight Night is about a female fighter; nothing new there, except this woman fights men—heavyweight bruisers—and beats the living crap out of them. And with a setup like that, well, you can imagine how eager I was to see it. I was fortunate to do so last night.

Fight Night revolves around two characters. Michael Dublin (Chad Ortis) is a sleazy fight promoter, more a swindler actually, since he often fixes the fights for a handsome profit. One night, when Michael is in a particularly tight spot, he meets Katherine Parker (Rebecca Neuenswander) and soon discovers that she can punch out men twice her size (great scene). Of course, dollar signs immediately go off in Michael's head; he's found his meal ticket. This sets off a series of adventures with plenty of ring action. I won't say more about plot here, for fear I'll give away spoilers, only that the movie did not disappoint.

Fight scenes are crucial to a movie like Fight Night, and they are presented here in novel but effective ways. But it is Neuenswander, a former taekwondo champion, who makes the fight scenes work. Katherine's fights with big, heavily muscled men look convincing (mostly)—not an easy thing to do—thanks to Neuenswander's ability to move and punch like a trained fighter and the muscle she packed on (20 pounds) for the role.

Neuenswander earns praise not only in the action scenes but throughout the film; it's easy to see why she recently won Best Actress at the SoCal Film Festival for her performance in Fight Night. She is a wonderful young actress (not to mention a humanitarian: she is the founder and executive director of HALO, a nonprofit that helps orphans worldwide). I sincerely hope we see more from her soon.

And there is more to like. The film, for instance, has a noirish feel to it that I found pleasing. Ortis also delivers, and the banter between Neuenswander's Katherine and his Michael is entertaining, though often crass, and fills the lulls between action scenes nicely. Don't expect the typical romance subplot here, either: she sleeps with women, ostensibly lesbian but never quite certain of the matter herself. The ending may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it. I walked out of the movie looking forward to seeing it again.

By now you've guessed, correctly, that I'm going to recommend you see Fight Night. I am not doing that because I think it is the perfect, or nearly so, female action film, because it isn't. But it is much more, so much more, than we usually get—a little indie film that delivers what the big studios so rarely do. Fight Night is a treat, and fans of the female action genre ought not to miss it.

Fight Night is currently making the rounds at film festivals, with the hope that it will eventually go into wider distribution. Check the movie's website to see when it might be showing near you.
Brad Wilke (Film Threat) | show/hide snippet
Much like its main character Michael Dublin, a small-time con man played by Chad Ortis, the film Fight Night is more sizzle than steak.

Following Dublin as he tries to turn a quick buck by cheating people on the underground sports circuit, Fight Night wants to be a tale of redemption and underdog success, but it never quite lives up to its own potential.

Finding a potential meal ticket in scrappy female fighter Katherine Parker (ably played by Rebecca Neuenswander), Dublin manages to persuade her to allow him to "manage" her career. Along the way, he discovers his human side and she beats a lot of guys to a meaty pulp. Hitting all of the sports film cliches along the way, Fight Night never manages to engage the viewer in a meaningful way. Though technically competent, it doesn't pull us into the unique world of these characters, merely settling to paint a few broad character strokes and then get on with the action.

Speaking of the action, the fight scenes are well choreographed and shot and are probably the best part of the film. It is obvious that a lot of effort went into making them as realistic as possible and it clearly shows on screen. If the same amount of time was devoted to character development, Fight Night might have been a more compelling film.
Robert Butler (Kansas City Star) | show/hide snippet
“Hey, kids, do you like violence?”

Underground fight promoter Michael Dublin (Chad Ortis) is taunting a crowd of gore hounds who have packed themselves into a warehouse to see a couple of guys smash the crud out of each other.

Dublin — a hip, smarmy and thoroughly ironic con artist — doesn’t just arrange these illegal bloodbaths. He bets on them, too, frequently fixing fights to guarantee a payday.

But when he runs into Katherine (Rebecca Neuenswander), a slim beauty who can punch out men twice her size, Dublin realizes he has found the perfect secret weapon. Katherine makes rigging fights unnecessary. Nobody thinks she can win, but she always does. Their business, Dublin declares, is “kicking ass for profit.”

Jonathan Dillon’s Kansas City-lensed “Fight Night” is a wildly improbable but often diverting effort that mixes ring action with a relationship movie. (It opens today at the Glenwood Arts and Screenland Crossroads after being shown Thursday as the closing night event of the Kansas International Film Festival.)

Dublin becomes Katherine’s manager, arranging ever more challenging bouts until he can pit her against the malevolent Richter (Kurt Hanover), a fighter and promoter who has come out of retirement mostly so he can pound Katherine into whimpering submission.

“Fight Night” is memorable for several reasons. First, there’s the performance by Neuenswander, a KC-based model and martial artist whose lean physique and tomboy attitude go a long way toward selling the idea that she can deck the biggest and burliest of brutes.

Then there’s the film’s look, shot mostly at night with lots of shadows and dramatic lighting from streetlights and glowing dashboards. The settings are appropriately skuzzy. Kudos to cinematographer Hanuman Brown-Eagle and to director Dillon, whose editing employs a jumpy style that reflects these precarious lives.

Dillon is particularly effective at presenting the fight scenes in innovative ways, making liberal use of freeze frames, slo-mo and super-fast footage — sometimes all in one shot — to turn the brawls into abstract dances of violence.

(“Fight Night” recently won an award for best cinematography at the Action on Film International Film Festival in Monrovia, Calif., and the grand jury award for best picture at the Dances With Films Festival in Santa Monica.)

Also intriguing is some of the love/hate repartee screenwriter Ian Shorr has cooked up. The profane, insulting banter between Dublin and Katherine is often very funny and turns up the level of sexual tension between the two — tension that is never released, inasmuch as Katherine apparently has a thing for the girls.

The downside of this is that Dublin’s postmodern, take-nothing-seriously attitude wears thin after a while. Also the film relies too much on his sardonic, hard-boiled detective-type narration.

A locally made film from a bunch of neophytes, “Fight Night” is a solid achievement. There’s real talent here. It’ll be interesting to see where they go.