Jiu Jitsu (2020) - Review

Jiu Jitsu is a science fiction martial arts movie starring Alain Moussi as Jake Barnes a member of a paramilitary group that was formed to combat an extraterrestrial in ritualistic jiu jitsu combat. Starring alongside Moussi are familiar names such as Frank Grillo, Nicolas Cage and Tony Jaa. Some lower profile actors starring in this movie are JuJu Chan, Marie Avgeropoulos, and Eddie Steeples. 

I would be a liar if I told you I was looking forward to writing about this movie. I watched it late last year or earlier this year after my wife found it in a Redbox locally, and it broke my heart to watch the movie and stomp on the heartfelt sentiment of her supporting my Nic Cage completionist streak. The movie starts with Jake being assaulted by an unknown force and obtaining amnesia after jumping off of a cliff and hitting his head on rocks below the water surface. The exposition of the movie flows from this point, as after being reunited with his previous crew, it is learned that Jake was the one who came up with the plan to defeat the alien in combat, but has to be reintroduced to every facet of the previously established plan for his, no, our benefit. Each member in Jake's group is an experienced martial artist, which shows in the choreography throughout the entire movie. Indeed, the fight choreography happens to be the defining characteristic of what is good for the entire runtime. Despite having a multi-million dollar budget, the shortcuts that are made to make sure that the project became a finished product are glaringly obvious: there are filming sequences that are done early in the movie that are done from a first-person perspective. Great. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the filming for this scene is internally inconsistent; Jake is being escorted by Jaa's character out of a military installation where he has been held prisoner after recovering from his initial combat encounter at the beginning of the movie. Again, this would be fine if at one point Moussi didn't deliberately put down the camera that he has been carrying for the alternative perspective and fights several soldiers before coming back to the camera and picking it up, continuing the first-person perspective escape. Another glaring style choice is the use of comic book panel transitions to move between acts. The way in which they are used points to an uncertainty in the technical know-how to transition from one scene to another. The script could be a possible root cause of this problem. The writer may have been able to plan all the movie's setpieces, but lacked the foresight to allow scenes to go from Point A to Point B.

That's really more than what I wanted to say about this movie. I didn't have an outline to follow when starting this review, so I allowed myself to get to this point by happenstance. I even thought this was going to be more of a blog post than a review, much like what I did with Army of One. Before I end the review, I did want to comment on Cage's performance as the jiu jitsu master, Wiley. We learn that Wiley was the previous "chosen one" that the alien deemed fit for final combat, but failed six years prior. We meet him as the washed up chosen one, a familiar trope for Cage; I have reviewed a few movies so far where he has inhabited this role: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I would say that his performance in Jiu Jitsu is more reminiscent of Balthazar Blake in The Sorcerer's Apprentice than that of Ghost Rider, however. His character isn't this aloof idiot, but someone who is still capable of training those who are tasked with the completion of finishing the ritual combat conditions. Overall, I would not recommend this movie to anyone, not even to someone who enjoys the occasional bad movie - Jiu Jitsu is the Predator your mother promised that you had at home, and not even in any good way. However, if you are a glutton for punishment, as I have been in my quest to review the good and even the very bad Nic Cage movies, not even the opposite of a glowing recommendation will stop you from consuming this movie.