He came, beat and ruined. As soon as mixed martial arts MMA fighter Karlos Vémola returned to the Czech Republic from abroad ten years ago, he began to attract attention. The extremely rapid growth in the popularity of combat sports here is largely due to this self-confident and extravagant brawler. It’s a shame that the long-in-progress documentary Karlos, which will be shown in cinemas from Thursday, doesn’t tell the audience much about it.
Director Michal Samir started shooting it as a film school student about 15 years ago in London. Vémola, a native of Olomouc, moved there to pursue a bodybuilding career, making a living as a doorman in the roughest clubs. And when he threw two problem drunks out of there, a guy came up to him amazed that he was their manager and these were his best wrestlers. And if he doesn’t want to come train.
Vémola, who wrestled since childhood and gained muscle as a bodybuilder for several years, started a new career in mixed martial arts. She was quite quick. Soon he entered the cage for the first time, parents and friends came to watch the match, but the opponent was injured. So he got an offer to fight directly with the champion, who also lost his opponent.
Despite discouraging voices from the surrounding area, the young hot-headed Czech agreed. He “finished” the local number one Patrick Carroll with a choke technique called rear naked choke in 44 seconds.
The sports and life story of the best-known and best-paid Czech wrestler is like something out of a movie from the beginning. Soon – after only a few matches – he became the first Czech to join the most prestigious UFC organization. There, the inexperienced youngster, aiming for the top all too soon, stumbled and was released after six matches. Ever since he started wrestling in the Czech Republic under the moniker Terminator, he has constantly attracted attention. Both dominant performances and controversies.
The new documentary Karlos touches on most of them in passing. Unfortunately, he does not manage to show Vémola either as an athlete or as a peculiar personality dividing the public and fans. Director Michal Samir and Šimon Šafránek, who completed the film with him, do not offer any clear perspective.
On the picture from the documentary Karlos are Karlos Vémola and Lela Ceterová. | Photo: Etiquette film
The unifying element should be the repetitive shots of Vémola driving. They wanted to capture how he is constantly on the move and busy, because he has training three to four times a day and is involved in many other activities. After which he must find enough time in the evening to feed his menagerie of lions, sharks, crocodiles and a host of other creatures inhabiting his household.
But similar motifs only bring unnecessary literalness, when the voice from the navigation is often repeated, for example about the need to change direction, which is also supposed to have a transferred meaning. As a commentary on Vémol’s life, it is desperately insufficient.
The film is thus a kind of dynamically but confusingly edited collage. A person who does not know the protagonist will have a hard time getting his bearings. Sometimes the very order of events seems confusing, and it is even harder to understand the importance of certain sports and life turning points. The matches themselves appear here for a few seconds, they are preceded by a title with the surnames of the fighters, as if the creator was not even interested in Vémol’s career.
At the same time, Vémola together with Oktagon changed the perception of this sport not only in our country, but also in Germany, where this most successful Czech-Slovak organization in the field recently expanded, sells out the biggest halls there and is heading further abroad. Today, Oktagon, together with the Polish KSW, is the largest European MMA project.
Vémola has a significant share in the unprecedented growth, due to the fight with Slovak rival Attila Végh sold out Prague’s O2 arena also thanks to the way the Olomouc native – undefeated at home – led the event called The match of the century make hello
The film Karlos is showing in cinemas from this Thursday. | Video: Etiquette film
When Vémola, known for his – borrowed from a foreign teammate – motto “Lions eat first” has to have a match, one comes across him and his promo everywhere. And when he steps from side to side in the cage, he can mentally break his opponent with a determined look. However, when he falls, as he did with Atilla Végh, he can’t bite the bullet. When he wins, he transforms himself childishly with new extreme additions to the menagerie or fleet, after a loss he closes in on himself.
However, all this can be found out much more clearly from each slightly better-conducted interview or podcast, of which Vémola has created a quantum. In the film, his character, sporting successes and downfalls appear only sketchily.
MMA fans and connoisseurs will only get a few unknown shots. For example, when Vémola stands in front of the door of one of the London clubs, where nothing particularly interesting happens. Or a few moments from a wedding attended by businessman Ivo Rittig as Vémol’s witness.
The creators failed to get under the crust of a man who likes to talk about himself and likes to transform his life into a big story, but at the same time he only strengthens the protective wall with all those legends and really can’t or doesn’t want to open up.
Although the film Karlos is technically much better handled than the film about his “nemesis” Végh from 2020 called Attila. The latter was done in an amateurish way, but on the other hand, he devoted himself in more detail to the sport itself.
The novel did not exploit the potential of the protagonist to the point of reprehensibility. With his extravagant, almost circus-like behavior and immature personality on the one hand, and his giant sporting determination and performances on the other, he could have been a fascinating object for the camera. A little bit of the hero of the series Lord of the Tigers from Netflix, a little bit of the Czech Conor McGregor, the most famous MMA fighter who made this sport a popular phenomenon worldwide. Unfortunately, only the torso remained.
The Oktagon organization, where Vémola works, has risen to the top thanks to the way it can sell the stories of its athletes. It is somewhat sad that we often learn more from her promo medallions than from a feature-length documentary that has been years in the making.
Film
Charles
Directed by: Michal Samir, Šimon Šafránek
Bontonfilm, in theaters from January 25.
