Funny bone blow

Strong cast: Cage fighter Ian “The Machine” Freeman, muscles into the movie business in Sucker Punch

Interview: Karen Thomas

SUCKER Punch wraps the good guy, gangster, girl and lovable rogue up in a plot of gags and fights that will make all but the most hardened wince.

Street fighter Charles Buchinsky (Gordon Alexander) drifts into town Clint “man with no name” Eastwood-style with his fists for hire. Hustler Harley, played by Danny John-Jules, aka Cat from Red Dwarf, sees his ticket to making some big bucks and woos Buchinsky into an unlikely partnership.

The duo set up a sting to take down
illegal fight promoter, porn baron (that’s where the girl comes in) and generally nasty knuckleman Victor Maitland. Ian “The Machine” Freeman had the fighting credentials, TV screen presence and strongeman stature to carry off his first acting role as the gangland Mr Big with ease.

Better known for flooring opponents in Cage Rage tournaments, the British mixed martial arts light heavyweight champion faces Alexander’s character in the film’s climatic fight scene.

Neither Freeman nor Alexander, who has choreographed fights for Hollywood A-lister Jackie Chan, came away unscathed.

“There’s a part where Gordon goes down on the floor and I kick him in the ribs. As I was kicking him he said ‘get in a bit harder, Ian’, so I kicked him and I broke two of his ribs,” Freeman revealed to Soldier. “When you see him wince and grab his thigh it’s because he really is hurt. There’s another part where Gordon’s sitting up against a concrete wall and I run in with my knee towards the post. He moves out the way and I hit the post. After five or six takes I said to Malcolm Martin [the director] that my knee was starting to hurt a bit and he said, ‘we can pad your knee underneath your pants if you want to,’ and I said, ‘what? After six takes you tell me that now’.”

Joining Freeman and Alexander from the fighting world is Kara Scott, former professional Thai boxer. Scott takes the role of Mandy, the high maintenance pregnant girlfriend of Harley who rolls with the slick one-liners and knockout punches between the Red Dwarf funny man and Alexander. Writer-director Malcolm Martin gathered a cast that carries the plot along an entertaining path, which contrasts humour with past violent, unsettled scores. Antonio Fargas – Huggy Bear from the hit 70s TV series Starsky and Hutch – lends an amusing cameo to the crime comedy.

While Freeman was happy to grapple for gags on screen, he insisted that organisations such as the police and Army should take his day job seriously.

The 41-year-old, who claimed to be “a big softie, especially when it comes to animals”, said: “I watch programmes on TV like Road Wars and see policemen struggle to get hold of a convict. The way they grab them it’s no wonder the bad guys escape. Mixed martial arts is the way forward for everyone.”

But despite being comfortable performing his trademark “ground and pound” against opponents, he admitted he had to learn a few new tricks about staging a fight for film and that it was Alexander who lent his experience to the authentic blows and kicks of Sucker Punch.

“When Gordon said I needed to throw a punch from this angle or that angle, it was weird because you wouldn’t in real life. But when you watch it back on camera it doesn’t look like you’ve thrown a punch from that angle, it looks real.”

The film allowed Freeman to live by his watchword, authenticity, but he wants to push the acting envelope on his developing career. The Sunderland-born tough man has set a goal of spreading his wings to take on roles that don’t require the blood, guts, muscle and posturing of Victor Maitland.

“I do a comedy routine that’s quite blue and people say I’m a little bit like Roy Chubby Brown. But I don’t tell jokes, I tell funny stories. So whenever there’s a camera in front of my face or a microphone in my hand I’m happy.”

So forget about Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and take a look at this tale (out now on DVD) of how good can win over bad with a little tweaking of the Queensberry rules.