When I’m looking at the cover for a movie and it shows the star, in this case Brazilian-born Taekwondo Master Andre Lima, with his fists wrapped in tape looking ready to kick someone’s ass, then I better damn well get what it promises. Alas, this is not the case for Beyond The Ring. As co-written by Lima, this plays out like something you might have seen as a television “movie of the week” had you watched the idiot box with any regularity in the 80’s. It takes a re-hash of a plot, hits all the expected notes (and quite badly, I might add), and doesn’t give the people you will be conned into renting this by the artwork what they paid to see in the first place.

Apparently based on true events, Lima stars as, well, Andre Lima and he’s a successful martial arts teacher who is still suffering from the passing of his wife but gets by with the help of his two children and brother-in-law Pat (Martin Kove). He’s also been able to get a book published thanks to his agent; DeLuca (Gary Busey) and things aren’t going as badly as they could be.

Of course, a wrench is thrown into this when his twelve-year-old daughter, Jessica (Aycka Lima, in another twist of “reality meeting fiction”, oh my!) has been having headache problems of late that turn out to be a nasty brain tumour. This throws Andre for a loop, as his insurance won’t cover a life-saving operation. But along comes DeLuca with a solution. If Andre will take part in an underground karate match against the, supposedly, feared fighter “Zulu” then he will win three-hundred-thousand dollars and have enough for the operation. And I say “supposedly feared” because not once do we see his opponent or are given any proof of this – the guy doesn’t even show-up until the finale and has one line of dialogue.

This leads to the usual montages of Andre training for the fight (we get to see him pulling a Hummer by a rope while the terrible 80’s hair metal sounding title track plays on the soundtrack), constantly breaking down into tears, scooping his son’s dinner from the garbage when he throws it away because he grew up hungry and it upsets him, and Pat arguing that the law, not his fists, should take care of things. There’s also a sub-plot about DeLuca being crooked and fixing the fight but it’s hardly there to pay much attention to.

Beyond The Ring is a total snoozer. It has to say something that it took me three sittings to get through it all. My eyes continually got heavy during my viewings and that’s simply because it’s so damn boring and takes forever to get to this film’s apparent drawing card of martial arts fighting. There’s just way too much hackneyed drama and wooden acting on hand to make this at all convincing and things aren’t helped out by a premise that feels like it’s been plucked out of a “Screenwriting for Dummies” book.

If this is Lima’s attempt to breakthrough and become a low-budget action hero then it might’ve been a better choice to show his karate skills rather than have multiple scenes of him stumbling over dialogue and breaking down into tears. We all like sensitive bad-asses, but there are limits. And while Kove and Busey may offer some B-movie credibility, their whiter-than-white teeth have more personality than either of them muster up for this one – I suppose the quick paycheck was appealing.

While I’m not about to discount Lima’s accomplishments as a fighter, perhaps he’d of been better off choosing another vehicle to show these skills off. I don’t think a PG-rated, sappier than shit drama that happens to have a few moments of marital arts is the best platform to do this. (Chris Hartley, 1/30/08)

Directed By: Gerson Sanginitto.
Written By: Andre Lima, Elisabeth Bernburg, Paul Johnson.

Starring: Andre Lima, Martin Kove, Gary Busey, Brye Cooper.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The transfer here is a bit fuzzy and suffers from some shimmering at times making it nothing more than passable looking.

Extras: We get a trailer (plus trailers for the other MTI releases Displaced, Afghan Knights, and All In) and a two-part "making of" featurette that runs nine-minutes and tries to convince us that the movie within might actually be good. It's just a series of talking head interviews mixed with film footage and offers nothing of note. Visit MTI Video for more info.