Jiu Jitsu (2020) Review

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Starring Nicholas Cage, Alain Moussi and Tony Yaa. An ancient order of Jiu Jitsu fighters must battle an alien invader who comes once every 6 years to fight nine of earth greatest fighters.

I’ve had my eye on this one for a while as I listed it in my most anticipated martial movies of 2020 list, and was chuffed when I was finally able to watch it. Starring good ole Nicholas Cage, Alain Moussi of Kickboxer Vengeance and Retaliation, Tony Yaa, Rick Yune (The Fast and the Furious, Die Another Day) Frank Grillo, Juju Chan (Wu Assassins) and Eddie Steeples of all people from My Name is Earl.

First of all, I liked to say this movie has nothing to do with the martial arts style Jiu-Jitsu. It’s not about a bunch of people rolling about on the floor trying to submit each other. There’s a couple of submission moves. I have no clue why is called that or they are called Jiu-Jitsu fighters. Maybe it’s supposed to be a completely different style because they missed out the hyphen.

Jiu Jitsu starts with Jake (Alain Moussi) running through the woods away from something. There are Ninja stars flying all around. He comes to a cliff edge and jumps off into the water, a few of the stars tag him and his head hits some underwater rocks, knocking him out. Eventually, he’s fished out of the water by Wylie (Nicholas Cage) and a fisherman. The fisherman’s wife stitches him up and takes him to the local US soldier’s base. Jake awakes with no memory.

At first, he’s cooperative but soon starts fighting the soldiers seemingly unaware of his hand to hand abilities. He gets sedated and seems cooperative again. Cut forward a bit. Kueng (Tony Jaa) attacks the base with nothing but his fists to rescue Jake. He succeeds and once again Jake turns on the US soldiers and joins in the fighting.

We soon learn about the order of the Jiu Jitsu fighters. So, the story goes a comet passes over the earth every 6 years. This allows a portal to be opened. When opened the earth gets a visitor from a distant galaxy called Brax. Brax then expects to fight nine fighters and then goes backs. If he doesn’t fight nine fighters or any of them refuse to fight him, he gets to roam the land killing as he pleases. Being an honourable chap Brax apparently taught our ancestors how to fight him in the art of Jiu Jitsu. So I guess in other words. He taught the world martial arts. Wylie was one of the past fighters but survived somehow. It’s not explained if Brax kills the fighters or not, he probably does. He simply fights the nine then returns home.

So Brax starts working his way through our hero fighters. Most are just cannon fodder, the only ones to really take note of besides Jake are Kueng, Harrington (Frank Grillo), Carmen (Juju Chan) and Forbes (Marrese Crump). Oh, and to makes matters worse, every time Brax gets hurt, he just heals up like Wolverine. He took multiple heavy machine gun rounds to the chest and just powered down and healed up.

I’m not going to spoil too much for anyone that’s going to contemplate watching Jiu Jitsu but eventually, we reach our climax and it’s nothing to write home about. The Raid, it is not.

The fights are so-so. Nothing that ant been seen before. It confuses me that when the nine bump into US soldiers who have GUNs, they don’t use them and keep going for knife attacks and predictably getting their arses kicked.

Brax doesn’t come across as being completely unbeatable, if it wasn’t for the healing, a couple of the fighters would of beat him quite handily. Oh, and Brax also has the invisibility thing stolen straight from the belt of Predator which is not the only thing it borrows from that movie. He can also move really fast when he wants to. So, yea if it wasn’t for all of them things, he would have been beaten.

Much like the Kickboxer movies, everything seems to feel a little off. The action scenes ain’t quite there. The acting isn’t quite right, you just can’t put your finger on it. Nicholas Cage is by far the best character. He once again puts in a crazy performance, mostly acting a little nuts like the hopelessness of it all has got to him.

Jake doesn’t have much dialogue. He seems silent through most situations whereas anyone else would be asking every question under the sun. Even with memory loss, you would say “I can’t remember anything, what’s happening, who are you, where am I, whys there an invisible alien thing killing everyone, I’ve got to fight that!!, you kidding me” but nope. Not much emotion or reaction.

There are also some weird camera choices. During one fight scene, the camera goes into 1st-person mode on Jake, then it put in the corner on the ground, we see him take out a for more guards before picking the camera back up for some more first person. I mean I’ve never seen that before and it’s quite original but Why?

In conclusion, Jiu Jitsu is a bit nonsensical. It’s doesn’t explain the origin, how far back the battles have been going on. Did aliens teach the world martial arts? Has any fighter ever bested Brax? It would have been better as a Mortal Kombat style tournament instead of Brax roaming about bumping into fighters. Alain Moussi has an imposing statue and looks great on camera and in action. His moves and martial arts are top-notch but maybe needs to get his acting chops up a bit instead of playing the strong silent types. With a great cast consisting of Tony Jaa, Frank Grillo, Juju Chan, and even Marrese Crump. Any of these guys could have fronted this movie and of course Nicholas goddam Cage. He can front any movie.

If Jiu Jutsu is on TV or Netflix, it’s worth a watch but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it. Jiu Jitsu is available on Amazon now.

Rating 2.5/5 belts