Sometimes, the most interesting character in a movie is the villain. You cannot take your eyes off Tommy Flanagan in the predictable but entertaining feel-good movie "American Fighter" as the shady underground fight promoter. He is as crooked as a dog's hind leg, and only those people who look after our hero's interests can keep him in line. Flanagan looks every inch a villain with his facial scars and his Van Dyke beard wreathing his chin. He acquired those distinctive scars before he embarked on his acting career when two hooligans slashed his face outside a nightclub where he was working as a disc jockey. Flanagan has parlayed a film career out of those scars. He is best known for his roles in "Braveheart" (1995), "Face/Off" (1997), "Gladiator" (2000), and "Sin City" (2005) as well as in all 92 episodes of the biker FX-TV series "Sons of Anarchy" (2008-2014). While Flanagan towers above everybody else in the cast, George Kosturos delivers a sturdy performance as the beleaguered protagonist. Mind you, "American Fighter" resorts to every cliché you've ever seen in a fight movie as it aspires to emulate Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" movies.
Writer & director Shaun Paul Piccinino's "American Fighter" arrives two years after its belated 2019 release date as a sequel to Alex Ranarivelo's high school underdog sports saga "American Wrestler: The Wizard" (2016), with Greek actor George Kosturos reprising his role as the heroic Iranian teen Alidad Garahasnaloo Jahani. Jahani's parents smuggled him out of their war-torn homeland during the hostage crisis in 1980 after Islamic radicals overthrew the dreaded Shah and took hostages from the American Embassy. Jahani found refuge with an uncle in the tiny California town of Petaluma. Otherwise, he would have been doomed to an early death clearing minefields for the military because the army felt him unfit for duty. Now, Ali is in college and awaiting the arrival of his parents from Iran. At the airport, he learns the heartbreaking news that gunmen pulled his father off the plane before it left Iran and shot him in the head execution-style. Afterward, they arrested his mother. Ali's parents were coming to America so his mom (Salome Azizi) could be treated for cancer. Ali learns all this first-hand from the pilot who explains their absence.
Ali learns from a fellow countryman that getting his mom out of Iran will cost $30 thousand. The trouble is he lacks that amount of money, and his poor mother will surely die if he doesn't rescue her soon enough. Moreover, according to his contact, he must get her out soon before the tense situation in Iran worsens. When this tragedy occurs, Ali is attending Northeastern California University on a wrestling scholarship. Ali's roommate Ryan Caulder (newcomer Brian Craig) suggests he enter underground bare-knuckled boxing where rules are ignored and only the strong survive. Further, he can amass the cash quickly without paying taxes on it. Ryan introduces Ali to a Scotsman named McClellan, and our hero clobbers every opponent until the Scotsman pits him against an invincible adversary, Bas (Eddie Davenport of "Gangster Squad"), whose forte is MMA kickboxing. Sadly, beaten to a pulp, Ali loses everything, but he has nowhere to turn to raise that amount of money as quickly. Now, our naive protagonist realizes McClellan has suckered him.
A besotted bare-knuckled boxer, Duke (Sean Patrick Flanery of "Born A Champion"), who serves as McClellan's ringside nurse, hates the evil Scotsman for stringing Ali along and decides to train him for the inevitable rematch with Bas. Duke is an injured ex-pugilist who has seen and done it all. He puts our hero through a grueling regimen before he turns Ali loose on the MMA fighter for the rematch. Flanery makes a charismatic trainer and manages to whip the Persian youth into shape. Nevertheless, Duke doesn't trust the conniving McClellan and neither do Ali's contacts who have arranged to smuggle his mom out of Iran. Predictably, you know Ali cannot lose, but Piccinino and co-writer Carl Morris take it down to the ropes. A disposable romantic subplot that has Ali dating a white female college student, Heidi (Allison Paige of "The Wedding Party"), pads out this gritty, low-budget, 98-minute fisticuffs that warranted an R-rating for mixed martial arts violence, boozing, and racial insults. Although it doesn't rank as a knock-out, "American Fighter" packs enough emotional clout to counterpose its clichés.
Writer & director Shaun Paul Piccinino's "American Fighter" arrives two years after its belated 2019 release date as a sequel to Alex Ranarivelo's high school underdog sports saga "American Wrestler: The Wizard" (2016), with Greek actor George Kosturos reprising his role as the heroic Iranian teen Alidad Garahasnaloo Jahani. Jahani's parents smuggled him out of their war-torn homeland during the hostage crisis in 1980 after Islamic radicals overthrew the dreaded Shah and took hostages from the American Embassy. Jahani found refuge with an uncle in the tiny California town of Petaluma. Otherwise, he would have been doomed to an early death clearing minefields for the military because the army felt him unfit for duty. Now, Ali is in college and awaiting the arrival of his parents from Iran. At the airport, he learns the heartbreaking news that gunmen pulled his father off the plane before it left Iran and shot him in the head execution-style. Afterward, they arrested his mother. Ali's parents were coming to America so his mom (Salome Azizi) could be treated for cancer. Ali learns all this first-hand from the pilot who explains their absence.
Ali learns from a fellow countryman that getting his mom out of Iran will cost $30 thousand. The trouble is he lacks that amount of money, and his poor mother will surely die if he doesn't rescue her soon enough. Moreover, according to his contact, he must get her out soon before the tense situation in Iran worsens. When this tragedy occurs, Ali is attending Northeastern California University on a wrestling scholarship. Ali's roommate Ryan Caulder (newcomer Brian Craig) suggests he enter underground bare-knuckled boxing where rules are ignored and only the strong survive. Further, he can amass the cash quickly without paying taxes on it. Ryan introduces Ali to a Scotsman named McClellan, and our hero clobbers every opponent until the Scotsman pits him against an invincible adversary, Bas (Eddie Davenport of "Gangster Squad"), whose forte is MMA kickboxing. Sadly, beaten to a pulp, Ali loses everything, but he has nowhere to turn to raise that amount of money as quickly. Now, our naive protagonist realizes McClellan has suckered him.
A besotted bare-knuckled boxer, Duke (Sean Patrick Flanery of "Born A Champion"), who serves as McClellan's ringside nurse, hates the evil Scotsman for stringing Ali along and decides to train him for the inevitable rematch with Bas. Duke is an injured ex-pugilist who has seen and done it all. He puts our hero through a grueling regimen before he turns Ali loose on the MMA fighter for the rematch. Flanery makes a charismatic trainer and manages to whip the Persian youth into shape. Nevertheless, Duke doesn't trust the conniving McClellan and neither do Ali's contacts who have arranged to smuggle his mom out of Iran. Predictably, you know Ali cannot lose, but Piccinino and co-writer Carl Morris take it down to the ropes. A disposable romantic subplot that has Ali dating a white female college student, Heidi (Allison Paige of "The Wedding Party"), pads out this gritty, low-budget, 98-minute fisticuffs that warranted an R-rating for mixed martial arts violence, boozing, and racial insults. Although it doesn't rank as a knock-out, "American Fighter" packs enough emotional clout to counterpose its clichés.