Arena - Nur einer Überlebt

Arena is one of the titles created during the collapse of Empire Pictures and was subsequently taken over and released by other companies following Empire’s liquidation. Together with the earlier Zoone Troopers, it represents the materialised soul of Charles Band’s trash factory. Whereas other production companies on the mid- and low-budget spectrum targeting the international video market at that time usually specialised in a particular genre, as was the case of Cannon Films with action movies and New Line Cinema with horror flicks, Band’s projects straddled all possible styles and genres, though they were united by fantastical motifs and, above all, special effects. Arena is simply a boxing flick with a gangster twist, which means that it takes place in a cardboard sci-fi setting and the main protagonist fights with rubber monsters. And it works splendidly thanks to the setting and costumes cut out (with a wink) from the cloth of Star Trek, which don't refute the film’s grand ambitions and the limits of its budget and give the prescriptively schematic narrative borne on the shoulders of a futile ensemble cast not only the necessary uniqueness, but mainly a delightfully cheap charm. (16.04.2021)