Search - History Channel: Human Weapon - The Complete Season 1 on DVD

Good selection, poor presentation

Michael A. Martin | 05/30/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a series where two individuals travel around the world studying (or, more accurately, skimming) through various martial arts, and at the end of each episode one of them engages in a match with a practitioner of that particular discipline. In spite of the hype, they are not fighting "masters" per se, just proficient practitioners or former competitors. One is a former wrestler and football player and the other is (or was) a MMA fighter. This series has its good and bad points. This sort of thing has some good points in that it exposes people to many different types of martial arts, of which there are legion. It also showcases, to a small extent, the culture from which it sprang. I say to a small extent because the lack of historical accuracy on some of these episodes is astounding, to say the least. You would think on the History Channel of all places they would try to be more accurate and up to date on some of their facts. Another thing I found some what annoying is the condescension, rudeness, and sometimes outright arrogance of the testosterone driven hosts, who seem, in many cases, to act like they completely understand to the fullest degree what they are being taught after only a few hours instruction. The outright banality of this is usually evident at the end of each show when one of them gets into a match with some one who actually does know what they are doing in that particular discipline, and then one or both of them usually makes excuses why they didn't do better. While most of these episodes do have their good moments, personally I found the episodes on Marine Corps martial arts and MMA to be the biggest wastes of film in the entire series. The krav maga episodes was marred by the poor attitude of many of the instructors, who seemed, to me, to act like bloodthirsty thugs rather than martial arts instructors. I'm giving this a three because it does showcase many different martial arts and would be of interest to anyone interested in the martial arts in general, but it is not something I intend to watch on a regular basis; I would more or less use it as a reference for very basic information on some of the martial arts presented."