If honest, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has a less than stellar reputation when venturing into the arts. From Ralek Gracie’s infamous ‘G in a gi’ song to Nicholas Cage’s awful movie ‘Jiu Jitsu‘, BJJ doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory when being shown in an artistic way. Unlike other martial arts such as Kickboxing and Karate, it is yet to successfully crossover to the big screen…critically at least.
So, back in 2003 the Machado brothers starred in an obscure movie called Brazilian Brawl. What could possibly go wrong? The length of the film was at 1 hour and 40 minutes which isn’t too unusual. However, if you could actually make it through the full length then good for you.
Supposedly, BJJ builds mental strength and character, which is needed in abundance to be able to stomach Brazilian Brawl in full. Of course, there are some people on message boards that have given it ‘so bad it’s good’ status over the years. If viewed from this angle, you just may be able to appreciate it as an unintentional comedy.
According to its tag, it’s about “A corrupt town official and his equally corrupt sheriff blow up the farm of Ruben Rocha in order to seize the property. Fortunately, Ruben Rocha is the uncle of five world-class jiu jitsu experts. And boy are they mad.”
For those wondering, the Jiu Jitsu experts are the Machado brothers and sadly their acting skills are not as good as their BJJ. The film was directed by Leo Fong who has a history of directing martial arts movies. Most of his works came from the golden age of the 80s when these movies were commonplace. However, Brazilian Brawl sadly doesn’t have anything golden about it. Interestingly, the movie was also shot in 2003, but it has aged terribly and looks more akin to a dodgy spaghetti western in terms of quality. The result is a 3.6/10 on IMDB and you can assume some of the higher scores are given in jest.
Nonetheless, as mentioned previously if you’re into a bit of alternative comedy and love BJJ then this may just be watchable from an ironic point of view. There are numerous fight scenes with awful choreography, images of Brazil taken from the Brazilian tourist board and pasted into the film, and corny dialogue. Whether it’s fighting on a farm or a prison cell, it has just about every corny action movie cliche going and looks straight out of the 80s.
Interestingly, Rigan Machado in particular has a history of training with Hollywood celebrities. Whether this was his idea is unknown, but if you were to put money on which brother influenced this, it would be him. Away from the suspect acting, the soundtrack actually isn’t bad in terms of being a guilty pleasure and the ‘Bad boys from Brazil’ song is the definite standout. So, if you’re bored and want some lighthearted BJJ entertainment on a rainy day, this may do the trick. Just don’t expect much.
