Official Synopsis:
Realizing that he had hit rock-bottom, filmmaker Alex LeMay (Desert Bayou) did what anyone fighting an alcohol addiction would do - learn to be a bullfighter. After he finds an ex-surfer-turned-bullfighting-instructor Alex heads to San Diego and discovers that he is not the only one on a journey to redemption. A Korean teenager a soft-spoken geneticist and a rocker from Los Angeles join him on an adventure that includes bullfights in Mexico and Spain. But it is in Spain where Alex's road to rehab takes a gut-wrenching turn - his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now he must decide whether to return home or stay the course.
  
Our Take:
Just from looking at this DVD I could tell that American Bullfighter wasn’t going to be very good. It wasn’t the unoriginal artwork that put me off, it was the synopsis on the back. The story that the film was going to tell sounded quite interesting. It sounded as though it was filled with interesting characters and fascinating story turns. The reason why it threw me off was because I knew if a documentary with a story this promising was thrown to the straight-to-DVD market, it was probably because the filmmaker didn’t have enough skill to capture the story properly.

The narrative follows Alex LeMay, a man fighting alcoholism and drug addiction who attempts to beat it by becoming a bullfighter. See, doesn’t that sound interesting and captivating? A great way to learn about the art of bullfighting while conveying a story of beating addiction and rising above it all? Unfortunately, in untalented hands it comes off as a cross between a bullfighting instructional video and a PBS documentary.

What really brings the film down, besides the PBS-esque editing techniques and flat lighting, is that the filmmaker decided to have his subject narrate the story. The problem with that is, like most people, Alex is not a good actor. The reason why the great documentarians have interviews to guide the story is because when someone is being interviewed they are more alive and vivid. Great directors know this; hell, even reality television show directors know this. The whole story is told in this flat, boring narration bringing down what could have been an interesting story.

The DVD doesn’t have much in terms of extra features. It has deleted scenes, commentary, and a bullfighting montage, but I’m a sucker for commentary. As long as it has commentary it will always get a B-minus from this reviewer.

It seems when documentaries are bad they always come out like bad PBS programs; cheesy narration, slow pans on pictures, and flat, dull lighting. No original style is found in American Bullfighter to really bring the story to life. It’s basically a documentary-by-numbers: find an interesting subject, film it, and write narration for it. Then add stock music, cheesy fades, and cookie cutter structure and voila! You have a documentary. With this structure the filmmaker managed to take away what made the film so interesting, a man’s story of drug addiction, and strip it down to its most clichéd and boring elements. Who wants to see that?

Overall Picture:
Movie: D
DVD: B-

- Adam Rettek
Staff Writer