Visual effects wizard Jeff Unay (Hellboy, The Adventures Of Tintin) is taking his career into a new direction as of late, seeing his way ringside with an interest in cinema verité with the life and times of beleagured MMA fighter Joe Carman. Such is the subject now the center of Unay's The Cage Fighter, a fresh new documentary readying for a February 2 release from IFC Films's Sundance Selects shingle.
When life hits him hard, Joe Carman punches back. Newly 40, Joe juggles long hours working in a boiler room, an ongoing custody battle, his wife’s chronic illness, and the demands of raising four girls. The one place he finds release is in the ring, where he competes in the bruising sport of mixed martial arts. Despite the promise he made to his family to stop fighting, Joe continues to train secretly, determined to prove that he can keep up with the new crop of younger, up-and-coming competitors. But as he contends with a series of increasingly worrying health scares, the question arises: how much is Joe willing to risk—his family, his marriage, maybe even his life—to keep fighting? A true-life tale of resilience that unfolds with all the drama of fiction, The Cage Fighter is a riveting look at the demons that drive a man to push himself to the limit.A lot has gone into comparing The Cage Fighter to the likes of gritty and hard-edged fight dramas like Raging Bull and even Mickey Rourke's raw performance in The Wrestler. Reviews pouring in since its premiere last year in San Francisco have a mixture stirring well into positive territory and all the more making Unay's debut at the helm a worthy one to put on your moviegoing calendar.
Unay produced and scripted the documentary with James Orara, and with Andrea Meditch executive producing. Peep the trailer!
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