Review: It has been a while since I last saw a new Golden Harvest production; I think the last one was "Accidental Spy" a year ago. Usually when I see the GH logo at the beginning of a movie, I have a small hype building in me that is expecting a decent production. Well, I could have never imagined that a movie like this could have been produced by Golden Harvest. The final result of "Extreme Challenge" is worst than those crappy B action movies that nobody heard about and are distributed each month in your local video club rental. No story, laughable characters (in a bad way), action that we have seen an hundred time before and completely uninteresting, cliché and cheesy dialogues. This sums up "Extreme Challenge" in a nutshell.

Right after the first 8 minutes, after that the fighters are introduced on a stage in front of journalists; I wanted to end the viewing. I thought my head would explode if I ever watch any more of this crappy bad acting overrun by English dubbed dialogue. It was evident right from the beginning that the main goal of the movie was to please an American audience, more than 75 % of the movie is in English and even most of the actors are dubbed when they talk in English. Unfortunately for me, I decided to watch the whole thing and fortunately I think I'm still mentally sane… I think.

The premise is, of course, something that we have seen in other movies, put a lot of different fighting style in a big tournament and the winner gets a big sum of money. Some fighters begin to be friends while other hates each other, all this orchestrate by a greedy producer with no real plot twist or something that we didn't expect. Maybe they could have used a little less clichéd plot points and tried to build up a more interesting storyline and put more depth in the characters backgrounds, perhaps maybe the movie would have been at least watch able. Even the JC Van Damme movie "the Quest" was better overall than this movie and the best of this genre in my own opinion is still and will ever be: "Blood Sport," which is far more superior in every point to this wannabe extreme fighting movie.

Since the story is very simple and without any real complexity, the filmmakers really should have put more time on the characters and make them more unique and memorable. Instead, the movie focuses only on three competitor friends, the annoying producer and also the actual champion of the event, all these character were pretty simple and non-original. What I remember the most from "Blood Sport" were those great fighters coming from all over the world, each one using a very different style with their own personal attitude. The only character who had some decent presence on screen was the Canadian actor Paul Rapovski, who also played "Tall Guy" in Jet Li's "Hitman" and who play the actual champion of "Extreme Challenge". Even if he over acted most of the time, especially when he was facing other competitors, his character was probably the most developed and also showed a little bit of humanity unlike most of the rest.

But one thing that I still could not believe my eyes was that the filmmaker showed most of the international fighter in their traditional outfits, which I think is a very stupid idea, making these characters unbelievable and extremely clichéd. Excuse me, but I was in shock when I saw a big white man wearing a red crown of plucks and American Indian boots. I told myself, "Hoya, that guy probably represents Canada, great!" because of course everyone know that in Canada, we still wear these crown of plucks everyday and oh yeah, we live in wooden houses and hunt for our food. I even heard that we might get the electricity very soon. I just could not imagine what people from other countries will say when they will see their native fighters wearing their stupid traditional costumes. Anyway, this is just rant but I'm tired of seeing stereotypes in films. I can deal with it in old 80`s movie but in a recent production like this, it's just too much.

The only true value that the movie has is in the fighting and action sequences. The tournament starts with a couple of test, a kind of violent Cross Country races putting the fighters all against each other until only a few remain at the finish line. The remaining fighters now have to fight against each other. In the semi-Final round, the fighters use non cutting weapons but in the final round they only use fight bare hands. The fights are very well choreographed and very well filmed most of the time, but since the character didn't had any impact on me, I didn't care who would win and who will lose, just don't expect any Rocky Balboa emotional dynamics here. At least, if you want to watch the movie for only the fight sequence you probably won't be disappointed. The movie feature a lot of different fighting style in brutal fight sequences, but since it was an official competition, the fighters are all padded and protected so the fights are less bloody, but it doesn't mean that the actors don't look like they aren't fighting for real.