Who Plays Who?

Channing Tatum Terrence Howard Zulay Henao Michael Rivera Flaco Navaja Peter Tambakis Luis Guzmán Altagracia Guzman Anthony DeSando Roger Guenveur Smith Brian White Ivan Martin Danny Mastrogiorgio Gabrielle Pelucco Angelic Zambrana Dante Nero Jim Coope Melody Herman Doug Yasuda Cung Le Rich Pecci

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Shawn Harvey Boarden Zulay Valez Ajax Ray Ray Z Martinez Alba Guzmán Christopher Anthony Jack Dancing Evan Hailey Stockbroker Jerry Trader Jim Lila Kimo's Girl Kimo Roommate Sal Fine Claudette Jun Seoul Dragon Le Loud Club Wannabe

What Do The Critics Say

"A total knockout as a piece of well-made B-movie grit, Fighting focuses on two men living on separate edges of society who come together to make a killing in the forbidden world of bare-knuckle fighting. It’s raw and packs real punch, particularly during a sequence in which Shawn faces a formidable martial arts opponent but also in the climactic bout with Hailey. Surprisingly this turns out to be the real deal, full of ferocious, red-hot, action-packed dynamite." Peter Hammond HOLLYWOOD.COM "There’s an effective, unstylized authenticity to those fights .... which enhanced the film’s credibility." Ben Mankiewicz AT THE MOVIES "Disarmingly entertaining. "Fighting" is fairly unpredictable. And a sweet surprise it is." Tom Long DETROIT NEWS "At every turn, Fighting is alive and unexpected." Christopher Kelly DALLAS MORNING NEWS "Fighting arrives fully charged by the charisma of its star, Channing Tatum." Kyle Smith NEW YORK POST "It is Tatum's performance that leads us to praise men of brute innocence." Lisa Kennedy DENVER POST "The movie courses with the crazy energy and urban life that usually get sapped out of these tales of men beating the life out of each other. This one feels almost electrically authentic." Wesley Morris BOSTON GLOBE "Thanks to Channing Tatum and writer/director Dito Montiel, reuniting after A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints: "Fighting" is mercifully more than the sum of its bare-knuckle brawls. Despite its dog-eared underpinnings, Fighting delivers some heady testoster-tainment. But it’s Channing Tatum who gives it a bruising grace. Weaving its way through Asian pleasure palaces, Bronx back alleys and Manhattan high-rise rooftops, Fighting deals one wincing blow after another; always leaves you spoiling for more." Matt Mueller TOTAL FILM

"There’s something interesting in this film and that’s the reality it brings to its subject matter. Scenes seem real. And that’s a lot to do with the performances. They’re all terrific. But there’s the reality of New York too, there’s grit here. A film title that doesn’t muck around. It says what it is. But not totally." Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES "Fighting is a testosterone-driven movie full of blood, beautiful women, big muscles and enough plot to be a good movie." Clay Cane BET 'Montiel has managed to inject it with the smell and feel of the streets that he clearly once knew well." Andrew Pulver UK GUARDIAN "If you want to see a shirtless hunk knocking the shit out of fierce fighters, who better to do it than gorgeous hottie Channing Tatum." Charles Gant HAET MAGAZINE "Shot with pace, energy and gusto, the rucks are worthy of the title." Rob Daniel SKY MOVIES "White-knuckle action and bruisingly bad dialogue make for an uneven but wildly entertaining fight flick." Rafer Guzman NEWSDAY "I like the way the personalities are allowed to upstage the plot in Fighting, a routine three-act fight story that creates uncommonly interesting characters." Roger Ebert CHICAGO SUN-TIMES Montiel's previous film was the semi-autobiographical A Guide to Recognising Your Saints, about the hero figures of his youth. He knows the streets and the characters who live on them. The fight scenes are superbly staged, and mostly well shot, providing a genuine onlooker experience. Entertaining and engaging, Fighting has action, romance and a buddy element in a tight, professional package." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE

The Inside Story New York native and Sundance Directing Award winner Dito Montiel ("A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints") has long been on intimate terms with the complex city and its intricate rhythms. In "Fighting", the writer/director weaves a tale of two men headed straight for failure: until they cross paths and realize each has exactly what the other needs for big success. While serving as an executive at Universal Pictures, producer Kevin Misher became intrigued by the underground world of illegal street racing and created the studio’s action-thriller hit "The Fast and the Furious". Wanting to develop another film about an underground group that comes together despite differences in race and age, Misher considered his next project. "I thought there was an opportunity to find another world where everybody participated in a sport, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds; where it was the activity that mattered, not what people looked like or how they spoke. I also wanted to find something that had the adrenaline rush "The Fast and the Furious" provided." After seeing "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints", Misher was keen to put writer and director Dito Montiel and actor Channing Tatum together on another project. Misher knew he’d have a good working relationship with Montiel from the start, and they began developing a script together that explored extreme sports, with the city as its backdrop. "He’s a kid from Queens, and I’m a kid from Queens," says Misher ("The Scorpion King"). "So I knew it would be a very easy fit. What people loved about "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" was that it felt like an honest portrayal of a life: rather than a depiction of events for the purposes of a movie." Montiel and Tatum were looking to work together again as well. Tatum suggested they consider a storyline about street fighting in which he could use his raw physicality. Using inspiration from his childhood, Montiel considered the suggestion and crafted a story that explored the world of underground fighting. "This is a really good version of a big, pop movie," says Montiel. "I knew it would be great to put the right people together and have fun making a film that I could be proud of." Though "Fighting" is a bigger production than "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints", it is still a story rooted in Montiel’s world. 'Saints' was autobiographical in nature and focused on the years Montiel spent growing up in Astoria, Queens. Like Shawn, Montiel sold what he could on the streets of Manhattan in order to make a buck. "When I was a kid, I sold peanuts on 42nd and 8th, and I sold fresh-squeezed orange juice on 45th and Broadway. I was always in the streets, doing things like that. Sometimes I didn’t sell enough to make the subway token home, so I’d sneak on the train. It could get pretty bad, but it was also a lot of fun, and I’ve tried to bring a bit of that late-night New York City excitement into the film. You put a little of yourself into everything, and in this case, when Shawn is on the streets waiting for something good to happen: a lot of that was me." Tatum ("Stop-Loss" & "GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra") was excited to reunite with his 'Saints' director. "Dito and I wanted to make a film about lonely people: about two guys who find each other and common ground; even though they represent two different ends of the spectrum. They both have something they need from each other." The troubled, sensitive and good-natured Shawn is a character far removed from Saints's violent, streetwise Antonio, but Tatum was eager to challenge himself as a performer. He and Montiel created a detailed backstory for the character who has fled his roots in Birmingham, Alabama, in order to try his luck in the city." "Shawn’s dad was a tough college wrestling coach," Tatum explained. "Since he was a very athletic guy, he expected his son to be athletic too, so Shawn wrestled. A lot of parents want to live through their kids and want them to do better than they did. That was a real source of friction for him and his father." Since working together on 'Saints', Tatum and Montiel have evolved an easy kinship. "Dito and I don’t need to talk much when we’re working," Tatum notes. "We get each other. Sometimes he’ll act it out for me." Terrence Howard ("Iron Man") was cast as Harvey. In a situation inspired by "Midnight Cowboy", Harvey takes Shawn in and becomes his mentor. The filmmakers were eager to work with Howard, whose role in "Hustle & Flow" earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Of Howard’s character, Montiel says: "When Channing first had to go with Terrence in that early scene, I wondered how we were going to make anyone believe that Shawn would follow this guy down the street. Then I remembered, when I was a kid in the street, if I thought you had twenty dollars, I didn’t care if you were some guy telling me the craziest story in the world, I was going to figure out how I was going to get that twenty dollars. Harvey is a decent person and Shawn is a decent person, and there is an aura about decent people that makes it so you might follow them. I knew that feeling of waiting so long and hoping for something good to happen." Howard says he wanted to work with Dito Montiel ever since the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, when he was part of the jury that awarded Montiel that year’s Dramatic Directing Award for "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints". "The chances he took in putting that film together! It was one of the most original and unique ways of telling a story I’ve ever seen in my life," commends Howard. "Alan Rudolph and I were judges at Sundance that year, and that was the first film we saw. Howard recalls walking out of it and Rudolph saying to him, "We could go home right now and come back nine days later, without having seen any of the other films, and give this film the award and be right doing it. Of course, we stayed and watched all the other films, but none of them came close to what Dito accomplished. That’s what brought me to this film. I knew I was betting on the right horse." Howard responded to the fact that both Shawn and Harvey have reached a desperate point in their lives and are looking for one good break. "Harvey is somebody who’s down and out and trying to find his way," says two time Black Reel Award winner Howard (2000 & '06). "Any time the door of opportunity opens, he’ll walk in there: whether it’s selling shoes or socks or helping somebody do some street fighting. But Harvey’s no street fighting guru; he’s new to the game, like Shawn." The filmmakers cast Luis Guzmán ("The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3") as Martinez, Harvey’s former childhood friend and a fight promoter. Montiel met Guzmán at his apartment to go over the role as well as his style of directing. Guzmán was impressed by the director’s ability to inject real aspects from his life and put them into a believable story. "I was turned on to 'Saints' because it was such a character-driven movie with amazing characterizations of real people from Dito’s life. Someone like me who grew up in the streets in New York can really identify with that." Shawn also embarks on a romantic relationship with Zulay (pronounced july), a single working mother who is struggling with her own trust issues. When Zulay Henao ("Illegal Tender") auditioned for the role, the character was named Tasha. The day of her audition, Montiel heard someone mistakenly, mispronounce Zulay’s name. Montiel recalls he "liked that she corrected the person who asked and said her name wrong. We decided to use her real first name, and she really became the character. She brings a true decency to the role." Though they share a name, Henao found her character quite different from herself. "Of course, she’s a New Yorker, so I understand her, even though I’m from New Jersey. And she may have a bit of an attitude. Though she’s going through a lot of things I’m not going through, I can definitely relate to her. All of us have made bad decisions that have marked us. She knows she’s made a lot of mistakes and that she’s paying for them. She’s a single mother working in a nightclub, living in the projects and supporting her family. So often in life, we walk around wearing masks and pretending everything’s okay, but these three characters [Shawn, Zulay and Harvey] strip each other down to the bone." Actor Brian White, who played Detective Tavon Garris in TV'S "The Shield" and Lt Carl Davis in "Moonlight", was cast as Evan Hailey, Shawn’s former wrestling teammate from Birmingham, Alabama, who has become a powerful professional fighter. White, who recently demonstrated his athletic ability and dance skills in 2007's "Stomp the Yard", looked forward to playing a character who is an expert at mixed martial arts: a sport he practices. How does he describe his character? "There’s a seed of antagonism between Shawn and Evan, which stems from their days as high-school wrestling teammates. Evan kicked Shawn’s butt when they were younger, and he’s now a champion, so he underestimates Shawn’s ability to win." Professional fighters Yuri Foreman (middleweight boxing champion) and Cung L (MMA Strikeforce middleweight champion) were cast as the Russian fighter and Korean fighter, respectively. Masterminding the choreography of the fight sequences were veteran stunt co-ordinator Mic Rodgers ("Fast & Furious", "Mr and Mrs Smith" and the "Lethal Weapon" franchise) and fight co-ordinator Mike Gunther ("Underworld", "Live Free or Die Hard" & "Fast & Furious"). They began working with Tatum five weeks before filming, teaching him routines that involved techniques from boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling to Ultimate Fighting and mixed martial arts. All quite helpful, because facing Tatum in each of the fight sequences were men who had been involved in combat sports, some professionally. Up and coming Russian boxer Yuri Foreman plays Sean’s opponent in the scene at the social hall in Brighton Beach, while top-ranked mixed martial arts champion Cung Le squares off with him in the Chinese pleasure palace. His partner in the Bronx brawl is "Stand Up" Bouncer Dante Nero, who has extensive experience in multiple fighting techniques. Much like our film’s hero, Dante: in his early years; fought on the streets to make money. Sean’s ultimate opponent on the rooftop, Evan, is played by a man with extensive martial arts training. "To come in and work with him was, from my standpoint, a dream come true," says Gunther. Tatum’s character is supposed to be trained in high-school wrestling, so the style that the fight co-ordinators created had to reflect that. Fortunately, they had a good student. "Channing’s a really great athlete," says Gunther, "so he made my job very easy." The co-ordinators trained White in moves derived from Brazilian jujitsu, muay thai and grappling techniques. "The fights are not classic movie-style fights," Rodgers explained. "What we tried to do was reinvent that." "Keeping up the emotion in a fight is hard," Tatum says, "because you’re filming one fight scene for fourteen hours a day." Synopsis

Small-town boy Shawn MacArthur has come to New York City with nothing. Barely earning a living selling counterfeit goods on the streets, his luck changes when scam artist Harvey Boarden comes on the scene. When Shawn gets into an altercation while selling bootleg CDs and DVDs, he displays natural talent for streetfighting. Harvey offers Shawn help at making the real cash. The two form an uneasy partnership. As Shawn's manager, Harvey introduces him to the corrupt bare-knuckle circuit, where rich men bet on disposable pawns. Almost overnight, he becomes a star brawler, taking down professional boxers, mixed martial arts champs and ultimate fighters in a series of staggeringly intense bouts. But if Shawn ever hopes to escape the dark world in which he's found himself, he must now face the toughest fight of his life. He's about to be matched with someone from his troubled past.

The Verdict "It's brutal! It's tough! It's colorful! Its a gritty drama! But isn't that what you'd expect from a 'fight' film. It's also, surprisingly, a bloodied but highly entertaining movie in its genre. Cinemagoers will find themselves ducking and weaving, recoiling in their seats and cheering on Shawn MacArthur as he battles it out with some tough nuts. There's a raw beauty to "Fighting" which is accentuated by some great camera work from NYFCC Award winning cinematographer, Stefan Czapsky ("Ed Wood"). There's a bangup bunch of colorful characters and hoods in "Fighting" which is punctuated with very realistic, well choreographed, bone-jarring punchups and, a touch of romance . The stunts and SFX are solid. Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard and the city of New York are the stars of this surprisingly good film. One for fight fans and the testosterone charged young men. Makes a great diversion if you're looking for something different. Recommended. 4 STARS." The Production Team

Director Writers Producer Original Music Cinematography Film Editor Casting Production Designer Art Direction Set Decoration Costume Design

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Dito Montiel Robert Munic & Dito Montiel Misher Jonathan Elias & David Wittman Stefan Czapsky Saar Klein & Jake Pushinsky Amanda Mackey Johnson & Cathy Sandrich Thérèse DePrez Randall Richards Mila Khalevich by Kurt and Bart

Run Time 105 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2009 - Roadshow Films - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2009 All Rights Reserved The Movie Pages - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.