Ring of Death (2008) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

USA 2007
Director: Bradford May
Cast: Johnny Messner, Stacy Keach, Charlotte Ross, Lester Speight, Derek Webster, Grant Sullivan
Rating: R
Release Date: 2008 (TV)
Running Time: 1 hour 25 minutes 42 secs

The Movie Review

How many times have we watched two guys beat each other up in a ring? Tons of time. If the filmmakers decide to use this moth-eaten premise in their movie, they had to think of ways to make their movie at least watchable. Ring of Death instead "thinks" of a creative way in a wrong aspect but at least this action flick is honest in portraying the whole story in its poster and title. So let's just get to the storyline.

Johnny Messner (of Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004) and Hostage (2005)) is an ex-cop agent named Burke Wyatt who is assigned to do something awful so that he can be arrested in Cainesville State Prison. Feeling reluctant at first, Wyatt is then promised to be an FBI agent by his friend Steve James (Derek Webster). His mission as a convict is to go find the


RING Of DEATH
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real reason behind the striking numbers of inmate's death. This is suspected caused by the illegal gambling and fighting over the internet held secretly by the heartless Warden Golan (Stacy Keach). Wyatt soon befriends Lancer (Jonathan Chase), Chow (Nelson Lee) and O'Reilly (Grant Sullivan) and learns that Wyatt has to fight in consecutive death-matches if he ever has to finish his mission.

Blood and violence and sexy babes, these are all you're going to get from this action film. So why do I seem to grouch, it's because this movie delivers those three selling points from an exploitation genre in a highly ridiculous manner. What manner? Let's just say that the concussion and headache that the actors/stunts might have suffered from being hit is transferred directly to me (as the audience) in its super-duper over-stylized camerawork. It zooms, changes angle, zoom again, zoom in, and zoom out. I even want to shout out to say this movie should be named the "Zoom of Death"!

Seriously, the fighting scenes are not bad, they are pretty exciting, but how viewers should enjoy it? If headache is what they will experience. And the ring is just drop dead dull. Black, blue, white and silver, plus red (the blood), are the only colours we're gonna see. It's just too mediocre. Not all facets are bad though, all cast especially Stacy Keach gives convincing performance, of course, he is the strongest actor in Ring of Death. Whom which if you still remember, has also starred in Prison Break TV-series as Henry Pope, or in another prison movie entitled Against Their Will (Women in Prison) in 1994 as Jack Devlin or in loosely similar theme movie like Escape from L.A. in 1996. But still, he is just not enough to be compensation or a reason to watch this fight movie.

I don't think you will see this movie played in theaters. And even with being produced as video or aired on TV, I can't even recommend this film to the fans of the genre. It's just too over-stylized but ends up simply failing.