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Although unlike cop flicks, in prison movies the bad guys are behind bars, it nonetheless still feels strange to go against our man with a badge cop movie training and root for the villains, which is often the case in the prison genre.
Yet when the lines are drawn as black and white as they are in Undisputed III: Redemption, where the wardens will beat you senseless and deprive you of food, it becomes much easier to slip into bad guys as good guys mode, especially when our protagonist is as badass as Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins) who goes from mopping toilet floors to becoming the “King of Prison Fighters.”
Essentially UFC porn with the most basic of plots, Undisputed III finds Yuri overcoming a horrific knee injury to compete with seven other fighters from maximum security institutions around the globe in an elite, corrupt fight where the businessmen “sponsoring” the fighters get rich and the last man standing wins his freedom.
After leaving his Russian prison and arriving in the Republic of Georgia, Yuri quickly ascertains that the new guards and warden aren't playing by any traditional rules other than their own greed for the green in ensuring that their chosen fighter – a juicer from Colombia – will beat every single opponent within an inch of his life.
And even though he's been a loner so long he'd prefer to keep it that way, soon Yuri forms an alliance with the American fighter Turbo (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) whose endless chatter and determination to go from forced hard labor to one hour of training bonds the two even after they realize that perhaps they've landed in a trap.
Filled with blood-spurting, bone-crunching violence that you can hear shooting through every single speaker in your media room as you watch, the movie is extremely impressive from a sonic point-of-view even if visually we get pretty tired of the same stale approach of slow-motion blows that synchronize with rap music, which makes some of the fight scenes look like nothing more than a video game you're playing.
As a movie, there's nothing in particular to recommend it if you're not a fan of the smackdown since it's just one long glorified prison fight film dressed that flies the flag of the unfortunate underdog for good measure. But if the sight of buff shirtless men kicking the hell out of one another appeals to you, it's Undisputed that you could do much worse than this prison movie that requires zero knowledge of the prequels to appreciate.
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FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.