6/10
"Change how you think, change your life"
1 January 2014
Here we have another dance movie. At first, it seems movies of such genre have exhausted and that there is nothing else to tell about. You expect the story will repeat: there is a huge and important dance event with a fabulous sum of money as a main prize and that can change dancers' life for ever, on the one hand, and there is a dance crew desiring to win this event, on the other hand. Yes, the story is like this, but this time the director have added some moral notions that made this movie acquire some deeper sense and look more interesting and intriguing. Battle of the year is an international b-boying competition where dance crews from all over the world try to get to and get the first place. The point is that for the last 15 years America, homeland of break dance, has not taken any first place. One of the former b-boy dancers (Dante Graham played by Laz Alonso) decides to change this situation. He finds a couch (Couch Blake performed by Josh Holloway) and together they create Dream Team. Couch's main goal is not only to train the guys to win the competition, but his first and principal idea is to make them a team, some kind of dance family where everybody supports each other and ready stand for everyone who is in this crew. Another subtext of this film is "change how you think, change your life". The read line of Battle of the year is that your reality is in your head: you get everything you think about. And the same is about success. If you think about it and act like a successful person, you definitely will get this. And you decide what you put into your head. The movie shows us how their couch tries to change not only his reality, but the guys' one too and how he changes their idea about friendship and other values. At the same time, Blake trains them to be excellent dancers, he doesn't forget about the main purpose why he was hired to train this team. Of course, there are great dance moments, the competition itself is just insane. And it is interesting to see the scale of similar events and different dance techniques. So, if you are a big fan of dancing or dance movies or if you just want to see Chris Brown, his acting, go and watch this movie. By the way, the end is pretty unexpected. I guess very soon we will see the second part of this film.
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