Every year the cinema will be host to a couple of dance movies, which usually disappoint when it comes to story. It still is a very popular subgenre though because the scenes you will watch these movies for (the dancing ones) are usually spectacular (something which stands out in the Step Up series). Battle of the Year is an interesting dance film because director Benson Lee was responsible for the interesting documentary Planet B-Boy, in which he followed various crews from different countries, preparing and participating in what is seen as the world championship of B-Boying, Battle of the Year. With this movie he does the same thing, but this time with a fictional story. Does he manage to deliver a movie that is just as fascinating as his previous documentary?
So how about the story? Even though B-Boying has its roots in Amerika, other countries dominate the Battle of the Year competition. South Korea scores high every time and business man Dante (Laz Alonso) wants to win and bring the trophy back to the U.S. In order to do that he has put together a team of B-Boys who can participate, but he still needs a trainer to prepare them. His friend Blake (Josh Holloway) once was a successful basketball coach and would be the man who could make it a winning team. After much convincing he accepts and has to try to make the group into an invincible dream team. With big egos, rivalries and various backgrounds it seems impossible to turn the dancers into a group. Blake will try though with his experience and very strict rules.
Battle of the Year can easily be compared to a sports film. It has all the things you’d expect from such a film: Battle between the best people to prove themselves, people with secrets and personal moments between the coach and his team will all be shown in preparation to the big game. So the movie doesn’t have too many surprises, but here it is all about the dancing and the movie shows some nice footage of that. Not only the American crew is shown, but a lot of footage of the actual event is used for the movie. For those who love dancing there is a lot of enjoy. What stood out was the fact that Sony has payed quite a bit of money for some product placement and it isn’t done with any subtle touch. The DVD of the movie has a couple of extras, like an explanation of the culture and behind the scenes footage but unfortunately doesn’t have more imagery of the actual event. Battle of the Year isn’t a very original movie but still manages to entertain enough during its 105 minute running time.
