The Toughest Man In The World

They call him “Bruise”! I find this particularly funny because Mr. T by this point was already famous for Rocky III, D.C. Cab, and The A-Team when The Toughest Man in the World was released. Admittedly I don't know much of the history of the film so it could have been filmed prior to those. Regardless he was still known as Mr. T when it came out. Since this is obviously a semi autobiographic sort of film they should have just called him Mr. T and spared him having to say “they call me Bruise” 30 times.

The Toughest Man in the World starts where all good motivational movies start, in the streets. A gang of young street toughs steal a boombox from a corner shop and when the owner gives chase they corner him and steal his fucking wallet, LITTLE SHITS! GET OFF MY LAWN! Que Brubaker (T, Mr.) who lays down the law and tries to talk sense into the leader. From here a morality play takes over the script and the movie becomes about helping kids and doing what's right and all that other shit Mr. T fucking loved. Gotta give the guy credit, when he wasn't murdering competitors on the streets (read his autobiography) he was helping the kids. T walked the walk and talked the talk.

and wore the CHAINSES

TMITW is really 2 movies in one and the whole “toughest man” aspect doesn't really come into play too much until the second half of the movie. The first half is dedicated to setting up and the eventual failing at setting up a carnival to raise money for the youth center. It's all well and good, but for fucks sake, it's called editing! 30 minutes of the first hour could have been cut, easily. The second half deals with the breakdown of the relationship of Brubaker and the Street thug he had taken under his muscle bound wing at the beginning of the film. As well as the training for and competing of the toughest man in the world competition.

Brubaker and the thug eventually become friends again, but the fun part of this film revolves around that utterly batshit insane toughman competition. The contestants have to complete a series of events with no breaks in between to see who's the toughest to face the reigning champ in the ring. The champ is an drunken asshole named Tanker. Tanker causes disruptions in clubs when there's no dancing girls, gets made when anything is expected of him, and basically has the all around good personality that we've come to expect from a man with roided out pecs and raisin sized balls. The events the men have to go through are laughable at best. They run, do push ups, chin ups and there's an obstacle course.

T wears no chainses in this

Let me backtrack a second because the training sequences are just as funny as the competition and I don't want to forget about them. Bruise does about as much training as you'd expect a man of his intellect to. He runs, jumps rope, lifts weight, and DESPERATELY tries to climb a wall. Mr. T can do ANYTHING except climb a wall apparently! I mean we're talking about a 7 foot high dilapidated piece of shit wall and he has a rope to help him! He just can't do it! So when the obstacle course rolls around it only makes sense that what's the final thing standing in the way of Mr. T and his $100,000? That's right! A wall with a rope! Now in any other film they would use this as a lesson teaching device to tell kids “anything is possible when you practice and put in the hard work”. And it would have been a noble message! This, however, is not how Bruise handles the situation though. He prefers to use that “mandingo” head of his to SMASH THROUGH THE GODDAMN WALL! While the other contestants falter on the wall (I guess it's a regular problem with tough men) T gets a running start and plows right through the fucking thing! Thus teaching kids that brute force is much more important to winning that any kind of skill that requires work. “just become a human wrecking ball and you too can be the toughest man in the world” - Bruise Brubaker (Disclaimer: quote does not appear in the film, but does appear in my mind)

SMASH!

If you want to know if Bruise wins against Tanker and becomes the toughest man in the World then you'll have to watch it yourself. It's on VHS, a sign of quality. As for me, I thought the movie was about 15 minutes too long, but all around was a lot of fun. I wonder if they got the line “they call me Bruise” from the film released two years earlier “they call me Bruce” Probably not!

4 toughest men in the world out of 5

Drink up, We've got movies to watch
Moe