Cage Fighter

Cage Fighter is Jeff Unay's 2018 documentary that focuses on the life of Joe Carman, a family man, who continuously breaks his promise to stop MMA cage fighting. Carman, is forty years old, with a sickly wife, and four daughters.  He claims he finds that the only way he can feel proud of himself beyond creating his four daughters, is to be a MMA fighter.  Fighting for him, is a self justification of his own self worth.  The documentary focuses on whether or not the fighting is worth risking his marriage, family and health in order to come to terms with his troubled past.

I went into this movie with the pretense it was going to be similar to the ilk of the Rocky series, or Southpaw.  Despite my lack of proper research of the film, I was presently surprised with the raw family life presented in this documentary.  While I enjoyed the raw approach and the underdog old fighter, the smaller changes and discussions between Carman and his rival, and trainer, were scenes I thought added a life breath to the 80 minute documentary.  

Unay takes on the fly on the wall approach.  While there isn't much background going into the film, or much info given on how the family progressed after Carman's ultimate choice to turn down a fight.  This is one of my biggest negatives of the film.  I would have liked a bit more premise going into the film.  Many of the scene of Joe interacting with his wife and daughters were arguments that never achieved any real discourse of why Carman could never seem to give up the fight that is more for his own challenge vs. his family's fight.

As someone whom has recently been watching a fair amount of older films in order to school my understanding of film developments, I can appreciate a film that raises more questions that it answers.  With Cage Fighter, I find that it didn't really take any approach to answer any questions.  Instead, as a viewer, like his daughters, you begin to understand that fighting to a certain degree will always be a part of Joe's life, I think the movie would have drastically been improved if there was some form of answers given to justify the fly on the wall approach as well as the strains the viewer continues to watch without much answered.  

Despite my frustrations with the vague approaches, I appreciate Unay's approach in the "Common Joe" who doesn't have much going for him, and even with the potential of giving up fights, small windows and doors that open for Carman.  Carman is not your typical Rocky.  He doesn't come out on top, but must find ways to be happy with solutions in order to include his solace to be able to enjoy life and family.