Chokehold (2019 Video) User Reviews

OUR TIME

[nogodnomasters · 2/10 · 11 February 2019]

Zoey (Melissa Croden ) fights mixed martial arts and in the first 10 minutes, we see two broken bones. Zoey ends up street fighting after her father (Casper Van Dien) is murdered by the Russian mob for impersonating an actor. We spend the rest of the film watching a script limp along as she gets revenge.

Some of the choreography looked like "professional" wrestling. Other times it was slow moving. The acting was not that great especially the scene "Zoey wake up! Someone help!" They could have come up with better lines or done a retake. Could have been worse. Not as bad as "Badass Showdown."

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity

Rated PG - Pure Garbage

[phantom-20 · 4/10 · 14 October 2019]

Crappy story, crappy directing, crappy acting, crappy badly shot and edited action. Did I say this is crappy? But still better than some of those crappy Merhi martial arts disasters. But still crappy!

Nothing new

[mjalshamsi · 3/10 · 19 July 2019]

As usual!! Someone died and revenge reaction , absolutely they can do better movie but they didn't!!

What a terrible B moive!

[MovieIQTest · 28 December 2018]

Guys such as Casper Van Dien and Lochlyn Munro have both become certified bad B movie brand names. Munro has been showing his face in most Steven Seagal's bad movies, Van Dien once could be a break-through star but later failed after several unsuccessful movies, and now also became a throw-back B movie actor since only movies with limited budgets and terrible screenplays would throw bones to him.

This film is so bad, signed up several non-talent females to play some entry-level MMA female fighters with a terribly scripted, poorly directed B-movie. The storyline is so weak and cracked apart all over the place, some scenes were almost clueless. Pointless fights with unnecessary cruelty for the female actors to perform, breaking elbow or even thighs or knees. But there's almost no storyline at all. What a joke, how dare you guys call this as a watchable movie?!

Would have rather been put in a chokehold

[jordan2240 · 2/10 · 20 July 2020]

After about 15 minutes, I started to fast-forward to the 'action' scenes, which were comically entertaining. If you can sit through this entire film, you either deserve a medal or need some serious counselling. Tried to imitate a few other movies (like 'Rocky') and failed miserably. Total waste of time, even using my fast-forwarding technique. Hard to believe someone put the time and money into making this.

Just another generic fight movie...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 20 March 2021]

Of course I sat down to watch the 2019 movie "Chokehold" solely because that Casper Van Dien was on the cast list. So imagine my surprise when I realized just how little he was actually in the movie.

Now, the storyline told in "Chokehold" is pretty straight forward and very easy to follow. It is a simplistic revenge fighting movie that does little to challenge the intellect of the viewers. Yeah, this movie is essentially a movie where you just lean back and watch the ladies duke it out.

And that was essentially all that there was to this movie; women fighting. And that made for a rather mundane and somewhat boring movie experience. Sure, I believe that there is an audience out there for a movie such as "Chokehold". I, however, wanted a movie with a bit more contents to it than what writers Brian Skiba and Craig Michael Hall delivered with this 2019 movie.

The acting in the movie was dubious at best. So you shouldn't sit down to watch "Chokehold" and expect to see a myriad of spectacular acting performances. The majority of performances were actually wooden and rigid. But I suppose that had a lot to do with the fact that the characters in the movie were bland, pointless and mediocre.

Yeah, the writing wasn't the biggest force of this movie, neither in terms of script and story, nor in terms of characters with depths and appeal.

"Chokehold" is the type of movie that came and went without leaving a lasting impression in any way. I didn't even know about it before now in 2021, as I had the opportunity to sit down to watch it. And I know that this is not a movie that will find its way to my TV a second time around.

My rating of "Chokehold" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. And that is based mostly on the fighting sequences alone, as the movie offered little else actually.

Some well-staged fight scenes and B-Movie names add polish to this.

[tarbosh22000 · 6/10 · 3 September 2021]

When a Calgary-based fight trainer named Javier (Van Dien) gets involved in the world of all-female underground Punchfighting, things go bad fast. Russian mobsters believe he owes them money, so they shoot him. His daughter Zoey (Croden) has a career of her own as a more traditional MMA-style fighter in Las Vegas, and her trainer is the by-the-book Uncle Ray (Pardue). After being told what happened to her father, she returns home to Canada to sort out what's going on.

On top of everything else, it turns out Javier was in debt, but not to the gangsters; he is behind on mortgages to both his house and his gym and he was in dire financial trouble. His last employee, a fighter named Renee "The Blade" Hansen (Van Ryck de Groot) is there to console Zoey, but when a shady fight promoter known only as Jones (Munro) enters their lives, things get even more complicated. He wants her to Punchfight, but Renee at first doesn't want her to. But, as you might guess, Zoey wants to enter the underground fight world so she can get to the truth about what happened to her beloved dad.

So she works her way through all the Boxcar Wilhelminas, only to run up against Natalia (McCrea), part of the Russian crime underworld, and a Scottish fight promoter named Feodor (Capaldi). Naturally, even though Uncle Ray disapproves of this more brutal and unregulated fighting style, it all comes to a head in the big, final fight. Will Zoey get to the truth? Or will she be caught in the ultimate CHOKEHOLD?

Here's the most surprising thing about Chokehold: they're still making movies like this in 2019! Don't get us wrong, we're happy about it, especially when it's done well, as it is here. But seeing as it's in the wake of Bloodsport (1988), Bloodfist (1989), Bloodfist II (1990), and, perhaps most aptly, Lady Bloodfight (2016), it's also surprising they didn't decide to call it "Blood Choke", or something like that.

While we didn't approve of the CGI bone-breaks, or some of the stupider bits of dialogue, we thought, overall, that Chokehold is a good example of the age-old Punchfighting story and it has a lot going for it in the win column.

For example, you can see everything that goes on and it's well-lit. That's no small thing in this era of poor lighting. So it gets points for that. Fan favorite Van Dien is great in his role, brief as it is. He looks grizzled (in a macho way, of course) and he isn't just a trainer; he gets in on some fight action as well. But the filmmakers found a way to cleverly intersperse him throughout the film even after he's supposedly "gone". It provided some welcome emotion to it all.

Another thing we hadn't seen before was, during the Punchfighting matches, there were live DJs playing music while the ladies fought it out. Even more impressively, during one of the fights, there was a live metal band playing. This hybrid of music and punching must have been highly entertaining for the enthusiastic patrons in the audience. If you get bored of the fighting, you can rave it up to the techno and dubstep from the DJs. Or if metal is more your speed, you can bang your head. It was pretty novel.

When it comes to Melissa Croden as our heroine, Zoey, it's a classic case of what we talked about when we were recently on the Direct To Video Connoisseur's podcast. Namely, that it's preferable to get a fighter to act than it is to get an actor to fight. Clearly she's a real fighter, which went a long way as far as the beat-em-up scenes are concerned. Her flat affect is almost at Don "The Dragon" Wilson-levels, which was charming. Physically she's reminiscent of Julianne Nicholson and she definitely has a future in DTV if she wants one.

Chokehold does not deviate at all from the formulas of the Punchfighters of yore. There's nothing wrong with that. If anything, its stubbornness in holding fast to the old ways is commendable. Some well-staged fight scenes and B-Movie names add polish to this well-made entry in the underground fighting canon. Fans of the genre (especially of the sub-subgenre of all-female Punchfighting) will want to check it out.

Flawed but honest effort at a B Straight to Video/VOD movie

[destroyerwod · 7/10 · 12 March 2024]

I was surprised very recently to find this movie. Never heard of it before, probably because it is very "indy", and i likely seen almost every fight movies made in North America since 88 and up so everytime i find a new one from a few years ago, its very welcome. Trailer looked promising.

So lets start with the main character, Zoey. According to the IMDB page she is played by a real MMA fighter that only done 1 movie total (beside a few appearence as self) so therefore you have to give her some slack on the acting/line deliveries.

I watched the movie dubbed in french and since its one of those very low budget indy flick, obviously this was a rather poor dub, but im kinda used to them by now. So i can't really judge too much the actual acting myself but her screen presence was fine and she performed well during the fight scenes.

There is one complain i have to get out of the way tough, wich baffled me especially knowing she is a real fighter. Her hair are litterally in her face every time she fights. All other fighters in the movie have them tied up solid like every MMA fight you would see, but Zoey always have one eye litterally hidden. I don't know if that was an artistic choice, a demand of the actress, or else, but this is the one thing that i kept getting annoyed at because no one would enter a fight purposely obstruing one of their eyes.

That out of the movie, i think overall Melissa Croden was more than fine for this movie. Casper Van Dien is not in it a whole lot, but he does have some action and more than just a small cameo. He is obviously center stage on the cover as a marketing way tough.

Lets talk about the action. I think overall the movie delivers very well there. There is a bunch of fights and they are overall well done. Some have unique flavors like a band playing in the background or stuff like that, wich add variety. There is plenty of violence and blood for a more gritty feel. The CGI bone breakings were not the greatest effects but camera cut fast and if you don't focuss "too much" on them, its alright.

Story is your generic revenge plot in an underground fighting rig, but its something i personally always enjoy and never get tired of. So it worked fine for me.

Overall you have to watch this movie knowing its an indie flick made on a small budget. I think they did great for what they had and if you enjoyed 90s US martial arts movies you will find some enjoyement in this. For me it is a solid 7 on my scale as a movie that i found entertaining and enjoyed for 1 viewing.