The Circuit is another low budget action movie about another one of those underground fighting circuits. Olivier Gruner stars as Dirk Longstreet, an ex-circuit champ who is now a college professor. He finds he has to return to the circuit to search for his brother, who has fallen prey to the gambling clutches of the circuit leaders. Meanwhile, a young female reporter tries to get the scoop on Dirk's past. A promising beginning to a tired formula quickly deteriorates midway through the movie. Almost every secondary storyline is poorly developed and ultimately unneeded. Gruner is a great fighter with quiet charisma, and he possesses better acting ability than most lead actors of this genre. He has a couple of good fight scenes early on in the movie in a bar and especially in the park scene. However, the training sequences with Billy Drago offer little of anything new, and Drago himself is wasted in an untraditional good guy role. The real culprits in the movie are the slow pacing, especially the middle third, and the terrible fight scenes in the "circuit." Jalal Merhi, the director, is an actual fighter himself, so we expect better fight sequences from him. Despite some good flying kicks from some fighters, most of the fight effects turn out to be disproportionately mismatched sound edits. Several of Gruner's martial arts moves are really just common wrestling holds. Gruner seems to fall prey to the Van Damme syndrome of getting beaten to a pulp before rising to the occasion with brief flurries of energy. I've never been a big fan of this style of filming climactic fights. The climactic fight is really disappointing and unsatisfying too; we are left with an unfinished fight right when we expect a punishing finish. This is a fatal flaw by director Merhi. Give us what we want in a fight picture! There is a sequel: The Circuit 2. 1/2 star of 4.