Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Jiu Jitsu (Netflix) is a martial arts kickfest that tries to spice things up by lifting part of its plot from Predator and throwing Nic Cage into the mix, but instead plods along until it finally proves to be unbearable. Don’t take this punch.
JIU JITSU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Framed in comic book panel conventions and the trappings of first-person shooter video games, Jiu Jitsu solders together scraps from Predator, Stargate, and any number of martial arts movie kickathons to try and tell its story about a group of warriors chosen to battle a malicious visitor from outer space. Its ostensible star is Alain Moussi, a practitioner of jiu jitsu and kickboxing who got his start in acting as a stunt double before taking a lead role in the Kickboxer reboots that started surfacing on VOD in 2016. Those films were created by Dimitri Logothesis, who directs and co-writes here. When we meet Moussi, he’s being pursued through a jungle by laughable CGI shurikens; he falls into the sea, only to be picked up and patched up by passing fishermen, who offload him to a military unit operating in the area. Rendered amnesiatic from the shuriken attack, he can tell neither his interrogators nor the audience much about where the tepid narrative in Jiu Jitsu is headed.
It turns out Moussi is Jake, a warrior tasked with facing an alien who arrives on earth through a portal in a buddhist temple that is somehow linked to a comet that flies over the Earth every six years. Alright, cool, whatever. This alien likes to spar, and it demands challengers, which is where Jake and his team come in, a group that inexplicably includes Tony Jaa, the thrilling martial artist from the Ong-Bak films, as well as Frank Grillo. One sequence switches to a first-person camera as Jaa lays waste to handfuls of soldiers whose automatic weapons are somehow useless; after that, Jaa largely disappears from the film. And Grillo, who is trained in jiu jitsu in real life, seems to only be here to growl a gruff line or two. (Maybe he just wanted to meet Jaa.) And while Jake and his warrior pals get into lots of kicking and punching matches with various soldiers and the alien, it’s not even clear what fighting style is being highlighted. Ridiculous blood spurts and bone snap sound effects added in post-production only contribute static to this faltering, watery film.
By the time Jiu Jitsu gets around to Nicolas Cage, you’re happy to see him if only to justify the time burned by watching the film’s first half. Cage plays a jungle-dwelling burnout with a history of agitating the alien, and he gets a few satisfyingly frazzled riffs into the mix, but Jiu Jitsu doesn’t capitalize on his presence or much of anything else on its way to the big concluding showdown.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? In its extended sequences of Moussi knocking faceless attackers to the ground, Jiu Jitsu channels the Undisputed films featuring Scott Adkins, or any number of similar martial arts genre fillers. If you’re looking for an alien with active camouflage technology and a hankering for handing human soldiers their asses in a jungle environment, the original Predator is still the champ. And if it’s bands of mysterious and just warriors who wield bladed melee weapons that you crave, The Old Guard brings that and much more to the table, including another spectacular action performance from Charlize Theron.
Performance Worth Watching: Cage is gonna Cage, even in dreck like Jiu Jitsu. During an extended fight sequence in the center of the film, he bounces cornball asides off Moussi while a comically Not-Cage stunt double does all the flips, throws and footwork.
Memorable Quotes: “He wanted you here,” Cage whisper-growls to Moussi, eyes popping above a five o’clock shadow. “The poet-warrior in the sci-fi sense. The spaceman.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Since Jiu Jitsu never manages to hang all of its ideas on the same hook, let’s look at some of its more promising component parts instead. The periodic comic book panels that serve as chapter headings have a great look, and the page-turning sound effect is a nice little touch. The shift into first-person shooter-style camera work is gimmicky, but effective enough in the moment, as it follows Jaa’s kinetic kicks and leaps. And Nicolas Cage is a worthwhile addition to an otherwise unsatisfying film. His lines aren’t gold, but Cage’s trademark delivery still puts on some crazed shine. Solid too in comic relief is Eddie Steeples (My Name Is Earl) as a military interpreter who shows up every now and then to mouth off at the alien.
Ultimately, Jiu Jitsu suffers from what afflicts so many VOD genre films: it lures with a notable name or two, misdirects with bad editing and mushy exposition, and settles on filling up space with a succession of faces being punched and slow-motion kicks. It wants to pretend it has something valuable in its science fiction-tinged martial arts plotting, but doesn’t have the time or energy to flesh any of that out. And what’s left behind is messy, dull, and deadened by repetition.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Nicolas Cage’s few minutes of screen time are nowhere close to saving this confused, flimsy martial arts outing that can’t glean anything worthwhile from its addition of an alien into the usual mix of roundhouse kicks and throat punches.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges
