Mixed Martial Arts is probably the fastest growing sport in the world, with huge amounts of money poured into it by several different promotions: the most popular being the UFC. As civilised as most humans profess to be, there is something innately fascinating about watching two men punch and kick each other’s faces off, and this is something film makers have come to understand as well. Films about underground fights aren’t new at all, and have long been a staple of the cheap, straight to DVD market; and avid film fans will be well aware that this is no comment on the film’s quality.

Chris Sivertson’s BRAWLER is a fairly standard illicit scrapping film, adhering to the tried and tested staples we’ve come to expect from this genre. Charlie Fontaine (Nathan Grubbs) and his younger brother Bobby (Marc Senter) are both infamous in their hometown of New Orleans for their success in illegal fights on ships on the Mississippi. When Charlie finds Bobby sleeping with his wife, the only logical way to settle is, of course, a fight to the death.

Sivertson does nothing to rewrite the rules of this genre, and there’s never really any need to…

Now, if you’re a fan of this sort of thing then you can’t go wrong with BRAWLER. It knows exactly what its audience wants and it serves it up in spades. Hyper-realistic macho mumbly dialogue? Check. Brotherly love? Check. Redemption? Check. Sivertson does nothing to rewrite the rules of this genre, and there’s never really any need to. The formula is so well refined that all these films really come down to is the performances of the actors and small nuances in the plot. Both the lead actors are solid in their roles, though their hyper-realistic macho mumbly dialogue can make conversations very difficult to follow -so make sure you turn your TV up.

This sort of film will either bombard you with fight after fight, or only have a fight here and there, and fill the rest of the screen time up with gruff, repressed sentimentality to show you that there’s more to it than just punching. BRAWLER is definitely the latter – it’s much better than the dreadful NEVER BACK DOWN but not a patch on last year’s WARRIOR. Although it’s good, solid, nuts-and-bolts stuff, with a title like BRAWLER one would expect the film to pack more than seven minutes of punches; but the audience is left baying hopelessly for more.