Guy Lodge Film Critic“Over the top” is a relative concept in the bludgeoning, unabashedly theatrical sport of mixed martial arts, which makes cartoon hero-villains of stars like Conor McGregor, even as their fighting gets grimily down-and-dirty.
So it perhaps goes against the spirit of things to describe “Embattled,” a sports drama animated by a clear McGregor proxy, as a bit overblown.
Yet at several points in Georgian director Nick Sarkisov’s roaring, blood-and-guts film, it’s hard not to wish it would take things down a notch: A hokey, old-fashioned father-son meller clothed in a younger man’s bling-encrusted robes, it increasingly sacrifices emotional credibility for the violent, amped-up bravado of MMA itself.
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