Bullet Points: Rumble

I think I will always have a soft spot for Gary Daniels. It all stems from the quality action movies Gary was a part of back in the golden age of the direct to video era.

If the star of Rumble was not someone I had a soft spot for I probably would not have bothered watching. And I say that based solely on the piss poor Photoshop work displayed in the poster below. The top half Gary Daniels picture is bad, but then you look at the neckless wonder at the bottom half of the picture and the top half Gary looks like the Mona Freaking Lisa…

• The Hero: Gary Daniels plays former MMA champion David Goran. After suffering a severe knee injury during a fight in Rio, David’s career is on the downward slide. With his big fight days behind him, David finds himself taking dives to make some extra money. David needs the cash because he and his girlfriend Eva (Sissi Fleitas) are in some hot financial water with her former employer… and when your former employer is a pimp, you definitely want to get him his money as soon as possible. As the movie begins David and Eva are hanging out in Mexico and about as close to hitting rock bottom without actually hitting rock bottom as two people can be. And that is when things get worse…
• The Fan: After competing in a televised fight, David returns to his hotel. Ramiro the bell boy (Fabian Lopez) is a big fan and tells David about an underground fight club in the city. David turns down the invitation to attend the fights with Ramiro and goes up to his room to have some sexy time with Eva. The next day after David and Eva have a disagreement about her “taking clients” again, David figures a night out watching some fights and drinking with Ramiro isn’t such a bad idea after all. Talk about the ultimate fan experience! Ramiro is getting to hang out and get drunk with one of his favorite MMA fighters. While Ramiro’s dreams are coming true, David’s nightmare is about to begin… when David wakes up the next day he finds himself on Ramiro’s couch, suffering from a major hangover and with no recollection of what happened after they started drinking the tequila. When David makes his way back to the hotel, he can’t get back into his room. The hotel staff act as if though they’ve never seen David before, despite the fact that he and Eva had been staying there for weeks at that point. David is pissed and confused. Hotel security comes down to the lobby where David is now making a scene. The bewildered David bolts at that point with security hot on his trail.

• The Ultimatum: David avoided capture and made his way back to Ramiro’s house. The phone rings and a distorted voice is on the other end wanting to speak to David… the mysterious voice belongs to a cartel leader named Delgado. Delgado has Eva and if David ever wants to see her again, he must fight in the underground fight club. So it is official not only was I watching another Gary Daniels movie set in Mexico (kind of like Misfire), I was watching another Gary Daniels movie where he was forced to fight (kind of like Forced to Fight).
• The Bad Guys: There are so many bad guys in Rumble that I honestly was losing track of them all. It is one shady character after the next. Eva’s former pimp and one of the local bad guys looked so much alike that they could have saved themselves some money and had one actor play both parts. The only true good guy in the entire movie is Agent Fonseca (Luis Gatica). Fonseca, who has been pursuing the mysterious Delgado for six years, is genuinely concerned for David and wants to help him get Eva back safely. Fonseca doesn’t believe any of the bullshit the shifty hotel manager is feeding him about the events that transpired at the hotel and Fonseca is not afraid to tangle with the crooked local cops.

Much like his character David Goran, Gary Daniels’ best days are behind him. Rumble proved to be the best of Gary’s more recent efforts, but that is not exactly high praise…. 2 Guns: Zero Tolerance anyone?

The Delgado reveal at the end of Rumble is something I didn’t see coming. Experiencing that moment for the first time I took it as a positive. But as the Delgado reveal marinates in my mind longer I realize how pointless the true identity of Delgado made the entire movie and that can only be seen as a huge negative.

Rumble should only be seen by die hard Gary Daniels fans.  As a Gary Daniels fan myself, I still feel like Daniels has at least one great movie left in him… Rumble was ok at best, but certainly not great. I’d even settle for one more good Gary Daniels movie. Maybe next time Gary Daniels fans, maybe next time.

Fans of the Bonus Bullet Points won’t have to wait until next time, because I have them right here…

• Bipolar: Aside from his physical ailments, I can’t help but wonder if David Goran was suffering from bipolar disorder. One minute, he is refusing Ramiro an autograph, less than 24 hours later he is pouring his heart out to Ramiro like they are life long best friends and telling him about all the incriminating crap he is involved in… and that was BEFORE the tequila was flowing like water.
• The Name Game: The film was originally going to be called Bullpen Fight Club.
• Reunited: Luis Gatica and Gary Daniels also worked together in Misfire. Both Misfire and Rumble were directed by R. Ellis Frazier.
• First Line: I was already a little gun shy coming into this movie given my poor experiences with some of Daniels’ more recent projects, but I got really scared when the first line in the whole movie was a piece of narration by Daniels as we see David Goran running through the streets of Mexico. The line was, “My name is David Goran and yes this is as bad as it looks.”
• Championship Past: Like his character David Goran, Gary Daniels is a former champion. Daniels is a former PKA World Light Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion.