Chavez Cage of Glory Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.0
Audio		1.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Chavez Cage of Glory Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 24, 2018

'Chavez Cage of Glory' is currently only available in the 'Danny Trejo Double Feature release from Echo Bridge alongside 'BorderCross.'

Bills are mounting for the Chavez family. Hector (Hector Echavarria) and his wife Gia (Sadie Katz) have both been out of work for 10 months. He’s fighting underground for scraps and both are going on every job interview they can find. Their situation is complicated by their son’s illness, which will require another surgery to save his life, an operation they just cannot afford. But fortune may be smiling on the family. Hector's fights are the most popular MMA videos on the Internet, and he's approached by Promoter John Stone (Patrick Kilpatrick) who gives him an opportunity to fight his champion, Cage Fury (Heath Herring), for $100,000. Fury, known as “The Destroyer,” vows to lay waste to his opponent. Hector will be in over his head and his wife begs him not to fight despite the family's financial crisis, but he has no choice but to risk everything to get the money needed to save his son's life.

The film is one of modest ambitions. The story lacks creativity but it's given just enough heart, thanks largely to the sincere performances Echavarria and Katz deliver. The fight sequences are fine, not particularly dynamic but delivering enough testosterone to get the idea of a "big fight" across, even when the film plays very small.

Chavez Cage of Glory Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Severe banding and some macroblocking interfere in many scenes, crawling across backgrounds and leaving an unsightly trail of video nasties (to redefine a term) in their wake, obliterating countless shots throughout. The good news is that essential textures are fine. Close-ups reveal intricate and well-defined pores, facial hair, makeup, bruises, sweat, and blood. Clothing articles appear fairly complex too. Of course the image features that low-end video glossy sheen rather than the more refined, now even sometimes borderline filmic, digital texturing of higher end productions. Colors are pleasantly neutral, handling skin tones, blacks, red blood, colorful tattoos, and other points of color interest well enough. Unfortunately the extreme banding and macroblocking are enough to overwhelm the positives.

Chavez Cage of Glory Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is shallow and hard-to-hear at reference volume. Most effects are some level of muddled: speech, music, fighting action scenes. The surrounds are used sparsely, but effectively, to feature some traffic movement in the 29-minute mark. Lip sync appears a fraction of a second off in places, such as a boardroom scene in chapter two.

Chavez Cage of Glory Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Chavez Cage of Glory contains no special features.

Chavez Cage of Glory Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Chavez Cage of Glory lacks the appeal of dramatic novelty and the intensity of a more intricately produced feature. It's high point is midlevel moviemaking but it settles into a malaise of generic ebbs and flows that yield a somewhat watchable but entirely forgettable picture. The disc's A/V qualities are fairly poor. No extras are included. Skip it.