Ultimate Force (Blu-ray and HD-DVD)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B- Extras: C
Film: B-
For
mixed-martial arts fans the name Mirko Cro-Cop is commonly heard and refers to
one of the most devastating strikers in the entire sport. Cro-cop is a powerhouse Croatian fighter with
legs that look like tree trunks and he hits and kicks so hard he knocks out
just about every fighter he is faced with, although recently he went from
fighting in the Pride FC and went to the UFC where he has lost the last two of
his fights, and one of them was a devastating head kick that knocked him
unconscious.
Being a
fighter of this caliber and constantly training and fighting takes full
devotion, but somewhere along the way Cro-Cop manages to put his physical
skills into a film to test his acting skills and the results is the slighter
better than expected Ultimate Force,
which plays out similarly to your typical Van Damme/Steven Seagal type of
action movie, however the big difference here is the Cro-cop could actually
kill a person if he was really fighting them, that is…an average person. This is a straight-to-video release that was
initially released in Japan where he is much more of a celebrity because of the
origins of the Pride FC, but now that Mirko has made his debut in the UFC,
despite losing, he is definitely building a reputation and anyone who has seen
his previous fights in the Pride know his abilities and realize that he is one
bad dude! Mirko was once a police
officer in Croatia as well, which is similar to his character in the film, so
the acting in this film really isn’t much of a stretch, as it would seem the
role was written just for him and because of that fact, it works well.
In this
film Cro-cop plays a super-assassin who failed his last mission and because of
that must be sent to a rehabilitation island, which is nearly meant to
eventually kill him anyway, but on the island he finds his lost love and the
two of them must plan their way out of their current situation, as well as
their horrible past, and begin a new future together, but that’s not going to
be easy as it would seem that more people want them dead and they will need to
use all of their powers together to defeat that force. Overall it’s like a mix of No Escape mixed with Bloodsport and Unleashed. So the territory
is nothing new, but the action scenes are better than expected and the fight
choreography is better than your average romp.
The
technical specs on both the Blu-ray and the HD-DVD are nearly identically and I
was hard-pressed to find any major discrepancy between either disc; both
present the film in a 1.85 X 1 1080i HD anamorphic image that looks good,
motion is never a problem, and considering this was straight-to-video it’s
surprisingly pretty good, although it’s not 1080p. The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo
mix though is a big upset as it’s amazing that a film could be released at this
point in time that doesn’t have a 5.1 mix at the very least. The 2.0 channel has limitations that will
disappoint some, especially since this is an action-oriented film and would
have some nice surround activity to liven it up a bit.
The
extras are geared, as is the film, towards MMA fans and specifically Mirko as
we see him training, hear him in a interview and see a making-of, which all of
his boils down to the major selling point of this film, which is showing what
it would be like if they took a MMA fighter and turned him into a limitless
action hero in a film where he could have even more power than he could inside
a ring with the aid of exaggeration and make-believe. Fans of this genre will be amused for the
most part and with the exception of the stereo-only audio, both the Blu-ray and
the HD-DVD are good straight-to-video releases, especially since they are
straight-to-HD-video releases!!!
- Nate Goss
