WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Jiu Jitsu, currently in theaters and available on VOD.
Despite (or perhaps because of?) featuring Nic Cage being, well, Nic Cage, in the film, Jiu Jitsu really struggles as a cohesive product. The premise is decent enough, with an alien, Brax, coming to Earth every six years to fight jiu jitsu masters after training people millennia ago to pass the martial art down.
But the cast is wonky, the fight sequences are mostly badly choreographed and the acting just doesn't live up to scratch. Admittedly, though, there's something quite intriguing about Brax, who turns out to be the best and worst part of the movie at the same time.
Brax is really a Predator rip-off, turning invisible to hunt the Order down, who were trained by Cage's Wylie. Looking at folks through infrared vision in the Burma forests makes it feel unoriginal, drawing comparisons to the aforementioned '80s film, yet there's some diversity to the arsenal it has. Apart from razor-sharp discs, which Brax uses like the Predator, it has lightning-fast speed, which makes it a cosmic version of The Flash.
It's a better hunter and combatant thanks to this; plus, it also can also emit energy beams as opposed to using guns. It even has heat-generating hands, which it uses to burn people's faces off, and when you factor in the MMA aspect of the intergalactic soldier, Brax is very interesting. Seeing him rock his sword like a samurai adds yet another dimension, creating an intriguing killer compared to what we've seen in so many alien invasion films.
But what derails these few positives is Brax's look. There's no substance or style to it: he feels like the Robot from Netflix's Lost in Space series. That screen for a face is a pretty weird choice, and what's even more unsettling is when you do see Brax's eyes, it looks like Jamie Foxx's Electro, or even Zordon from the Power Rangers TV show and movies. In short, it lacks authenticity and is pretty laughable.
He also has no logic in battle because rather than killing multiple enemies at once or taking away their invisibility cloaks, Brax slowly takes one out after the next -- even when they're standing right next to each other. The creature also forgets to use his main weapons against Wylie and his son, Jake, preferring to tough it out, making it clear the movie isn't following too many of its own rules.
It picks and chooses who to blast, for example, yet it doesn't do this for the more dangerous opponents, which is odd as they're pretty good at close-range combat. Apart from looking terrible, it has no strategy or sense of military tactics, either, and ends up just being a joke. It's sad as there's a lot of potential there, but Brax feels like too much of a clunky mess to save in the end.
Had the film done something different enough from the Predator influence, perhaps given him a different look, different weapons, or maybe more tools, this might have rectified the issue but as it stands, for all Brax's good points, there are three negative ones that tremendously diminish the character.
Directed by Dimitri Logothetis, Jiu Jitsu stars Alain Moussi, Nicolas Cage, Marie Avgeropoulos, Frank Grillo, Tony Jaa, Marrese Crump and Juju Chan. The film is currently in theaters and on video on demand.