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400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

This week we face an existential crisis as we approach the box office and must decide between Fighting (253 screens) and Knowing (264 screens). Let's listen in on this inner conflict.

Mind: Clearly we must choose Knowing.

Body: There you go again. You're forgetting that there can be no Knowing without Fighting.

Mind: How so?

Body: Just think about the cavemen days. No one would have had the opportunity to learn anything if the caveman hadn't learned how to hunt dinosaurs.

Mind: That's ridiculous. What have you been watching? "The Flintstones"? And how could the caveman have fought dinosaurs without stopping and thinking about how to make weapons?

Maybe a few of you saw Fighting over the weekend; I'd guess that most Cinematical readers chose to steer clear. I kind of liked the film, which is thin and silly but has a nice measured earnestness and is beautifully directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), a prodigy with a terrific sense of rhythm, motion and place. But the real reason I'd recommend Fighting to all of you is a completely deranged, unmissable performance by one Roger Guenveur Smith. Smith has bided his time over the past couple of decades in B-grade DTV efforts, small roles in Spike Lee films (he was Do the Right Thing's Smiley), and an occasional appearance in something higher-profile, like Ridley Scott's American Gangster. I hope that Fighting earns him some cult popularity and maybe some more interesting work.

He plays "Jack Dancing," a New York mobster and streetfighting kingpin who gives Channing Tatum's Shawn his first bout at the urging of hustling small-timer Harvey (Terrence Howard). He doesn't have a lot of screentime, but he takes the movie to a whole new, utterly bizarre level whenever he appears -- and in the process made me laugh harder than almost anything else this year. His performance has been described by others as "Walken-esque," but while Smith is compellingly weird in a similar way (and speaks with a comparable off-kilter cadence), he adds an element of hardass gangster menace that somehow makes the whole thing even funnier.

The presence of Beyoncé Knowles plus appropriately sultry/trashy advertising scored a big hit for Screen Gems this weekend, with Obsessed raking in a cool $28.5 million between black audiences and thriller audiences. Depending on how it holds up, the airport novel of a film could compete with The Exorcism of Emily Rose for the title of highest-grossing Screen Gems release ($75 million). It's a marketing triumph and a minor April surprise.

Three more films debuted in wide release and all posted comparatively strong numbers. That's a somewhat controversial claim for The Soloist, whose $9.7 million, fourth-place finish doesn't seem too robust. It's certainly not overwhelming, but for an arty, detached film that was moved from awards season to April, it's not awful. Rogue's Fighting finished slightly ahead with $11.4 milion, beating last spring's street-brawling movie, Never Back Down. And Earth, the DisneyNature documentary that opened Wednesday, picked up $8.5 million for the weekend -- the second biggest all-time opening for a documentary -- and $14.2 million for the five days. Good for them.

Out of the top ten, the critically panned The Informers -- Senator Entertainment's first attempt at a theatrical release -- floundered with $300,000 in semi-wide release. Senator, you will recall, is the distributor that has kept All the Boys Love Mandy Lane on the shelf for approximately forever. Make of that what you will.

Last weekend's main holdovers, 17 Again and State of Play each fell around 50%. The latter is a bit of a disappointment, as I had hoped that the exceedingly entertaining film would coast at least slightly on good word-of-mouth.

The full top 10 after the jump.

"I believe in fate," murmurs the soft-spoken Shawn MacArthur, by way of explaining how he was positive that he'd run into beautiful single mother / cocktail waitress Zulay so soon after a fleeting encounter in the most populated city in the United States. But he might as well have said, "I believe in movies in which every step of the narrative is telegraphed well in advance, every character is numbingly familiar, every choreographed brawl is edited into unwatchable confusion, and a feisty, tiny, Spanish-speaking mother steals the show."

As played by Channing Tatum in Fighting, a low-key potboiler directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), Shawn is a mysterious, brooding loner with downcast eyes that only light up when he's flailing away at an opponent with his hands, feet, or head. Shawn has somehow landed in New York City, evidently by fate, since we never learn why he headed to the Big Apple instead of, say, Cincinnati or Atlanta or Albuquerque.

Eventually, pieces of his back story emerge, but long before that happens, the two defining aspects of his personality are writ large: he's a nice guy with a wicked temper. One moment, he's politely holding an emergency gate open for an elderly lady in the subway and bemusedly indulging a long stream of cheats who quickly follow behind her. The next, he's flailing away at a gang of thieves intent on disrupting his fledgling street merchant "business" of selling scavenged items on a sidewalk.

The latter scene is where he catches the eye of two other characters who will, inevitably, become the most important people in his life: Terrence Howard as street hustler Harvey and Zulay Henao as Zulay, a woman trying to buy a children's book.

17 Again marks Zac Efron's second number one opening in six months. The Russell Crowe thriller State of Play took a respectable second place with Crank: High Voltage taking sixth place with only $6.9 million. Here's the top five:

1. 17 Again: $23.7 million
2. State of Play: $14 million
3. Hannah Montana The Movie: $13.4 million
4. Monsters Vs. Aliens: $13.2 million
5. Fast and Furious: $11.7 million

Four new releases this week:

Earth
What's It All About: A 99 minute tour of life on Earth edited down from a 12-hour TV mini-series. This one releases today to commemorate Earth Day.
Why It Might Do Well: Dude, check out the baby polar bears! Also Rottentomatoes.com is giving it an 83% Fresh rating.
Why It Might Not Do Well: It's a smaller release and much of the footage has already played on TV
Number of Theaters: 1,800
Prediction: $8 million.

Fighting
What's It All About: A morose-looking small town boy comes to the big city and finds he has a talent for competitive bare-knuckle brawling.
Why It Might Do Well: I suppose anything is possible.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The overly complicated title may confuse some.
Number of Theaters: 2,100
Prediction: $7 million

Click image below for full poster

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Fighting, starring Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard. Directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), Fighting follows a young fighter/ticket scalper who's "discovered" and subsequently mentored by a smooth-talking trainer with eyes on making a whole lotta money on the underground fighting circuit. Kinda feels like Fight Club meets The Fast and the Furious, but with Montiel behind the camera, you're going to get a strong, gritty realness since he grew up on the streets of New York City (where the movie is set) and likes to inject a lot of his own experiences into his films. (And hey, you ladies get Channing Tatum without his shirt on for an hour and a half -- life ain't so bad after all, eh?)

Fighting hits theaters on April 24. Check out the full poster below and the trailer over on Moviefone.

As I mentioned before, Cinematical had a chance to visit the set of Dito Montiel's (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) new film, Fighting, last night, which was shooting on seventh avenue and 54th street here in New York City. We'll have a full set report for you in the coming weeks, but why not share with you a few nuggets of information now. I was on the set for about four hours before we finally got to speak to director Dito Montiel. After it began pouring out, they called lunch, and myself -- along with one other writer and Montiel -- ran across the street, ducked into a diner and sat down for some conversation over soup and a beer. We talked for a good half hour about Fighting, among all sorts of other things, but toward the end of our chat Montiel revealed that he will indeed adapt and direct his latest book, Eddie Krumble Is the Clapper, for the big screen.

For starters, Montiel will be leaving New York for the first time, and making this film elsewhere. Here's what he had to say about the film: "Yeah, I'm setting up to make that movie -- it's a whole different trip -- and it's in Los Angeles, so I get to sneak out there for a minute. It's called Eddie Krumble Is the Clapper, and it's about a guy who's a clapper for shows. They hire people to clap and laugh at bad jokes. It's a little different world; they get $35 a show." I asked Montiel if this was based on someone he knew, and he replied, "Yeah, my friend Eddie. Not Eddie Krumble -- I named him Eddie Krumble -- but my friend Eddie; he's from Long Island City and he moved out to Los Angeles. He gets thirty-five dollars a day, he does like three shows a day, and he sits in on whatever shows people don't go to. It's like extras, except it's a little bit below extras."

And does he have anyone in mind yet to play this clapper? How about Channing Tatum (who's working with Montiel for the second time on Fighting, after also starring in Saints)? When I brought up Tatum's name, Montiel laughed and said: "Hey, you never know. Channing would make a badass clapper -- he'd be the toughest clapper ever!"

Cinematical was lucky enough to visit the set of Fighting last night in New York City, where Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard were shooting scenes for the new drama directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints). It was a night shoot, and so this writer didn't leave the set until close to one in the morning (which was their lunch!), but before I bounced home to my bed, I managed to speak with Tatum for a bit about the role, and other -- more superhero-ish stuff -- that might be in store for the actor down the line. Of course, the first thing we were wondering was whether Tatum was among those who auditioned for the new Justice League of America movie.

Has he been approached to play any superhero roles? Tatum said, "Yeah, yeah, I mean a few, a few -- I don't know, I just can't quite see myself as that yet. I like that, and eventually one day I'd like to do it; I just don't want to do it yet." Did he audition for any of the Justice League roles? "No, none of the Justice League. The only superhero I've ever auditioned for was Gambit, for the third X-Men. They ended up pulling the character out of the movie. I don't know, someone told me about a crazy He-Man thing -- I don't know, I can't quite figure it out. I need to really want it. I can only go after something that I really want bad."

Tatum also revealed that there is one superhero-ish project that he is working on: "There is a hero thing that I'm actually producing. It's called Plucker. It's a graphic novel by Brom, and I got it set up at Temple Hill, and it's now set up at New Line -- it's going to be a crazy sort of fantastical story about a jack-in-the-box that saves this boy. It's a weird, sort of darker, trippier version of Toy Story." When asked if it would be animated or live action, Tatum replied, "I don't know, we have to find a director that has a vision for it first."

Could you see Channing Tatum in any superhero roles? If so, which ones?