I didn’t really wait for something like that from Gary, last years he was busy doing strange low budget movies and working alongside big guys such as Sly Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Steve Austin in his regular tempo. Forced to Fight was a huge surprise bringing back the old muscles fighter which I knew Mr. Daniels for a long time.
Forced to Fight is a melodramatic underground fighting tournament movie where Gary plays Shane, a former tournament fighter who has retired, opened up on an auto body shop and settled down happily with his wife and young son. But Shane is forced back into the ring to cover his brother Scotty’s debts, but the fighting world isn’t the same as when he left it…
The simple storyline just needs a good acting and decent action sequences to which Gary get used to after dozen of films he made alongside Jackie Chan, Richard Norton, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and other famous action stars.
Daniels still in amazing shape in his 50s, and doesn’t seem to have lost an ounce of his speed and agility from the beginning of his career. Fighting choreography is done by Gary himself with a help of Romanian-born stunt coordinator Claudiu-Cristian Prisecaru, they did not a bad job with the fight scenes utilizes Gary’s superb kicking ability, especially his use of spinning kicks, and also added plenty of grappling techniques to give the action a satisfying range of flavors. This is not Blood and Bone with Michael Jai White of the cause but still has its style and states that Gary Daniels is still in the upper echelon of cinematic superkicks.
The Brooklyn of Forced to Fight is a grittier, darker world than the real locale, which makes it easier to accept as a place where a gambler and criminal like Peter Weller’s Danny G. can rule the night. Weller’s role is a far cry from the straight arrow people knew him from the Robocop days but makes a thoroughly engaging villain of the love-to-hate-him variety.
Anyone who’s enjoyed White Tiger, Bloodmoon or Fist of The North Star kung fu films in the 90s will appreciate that this is a major step forward in the quality of Gary Daniels’ work… dramatically at least.
