Category: Boxing film

Fat City (1972)

Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges excel as boxers failing to live The Dream in Fat City

Director: John Huston

Cast: Stacy Keach (Billy Tully), Jeff Bridges (Ernie Munger), Susan Tyrell (Oma Lee Greer), Candy Clark (Faye), Nicholas Colasanto (Ruben), Art Aragon (Babe), Curtis Cokes (Earl)

The American Dream has an underbelly. For all those dreamers who find fame, fortune and glory in the Land of Free there are thousands who never made it. Thousands who stayed rooted at the bottom of the rung of the ladder and saw their dreams disappear and lives head into turnaround. Fat City – the good life, according to the slang of San Francisco, the crazy goal you’ll never achieve – is all about those left behind by their dreams.

Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) is a former boxer, now down on his luck and now possibly struggling with alcoholism. Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) is a young prospect who shows some promise in the ring. Both of them dream of getting into the limelight – but what hope do they have when it’s nearly impossible to turn your life around in smalltown America?

John Huston’s film is unflashily assembled, but carries a fundamental emotional power as it investigates with a simplicity and honesty the difficult dynamics of real life. It’s a film which has no pat answers, no simple solutions and doesn’t offer much in the way of hope. Which is not to say that it is a depressing vision of the world. Just a recognisable one. Because, sure, for most of us there isn’t any real chance of seeing our lives change. 

Huston’s film – brilliantly shot with a 1970’s muddy graininess mixed with flashes of revealing light by Conrad Hall – is wonderfully well observed and beautifully paced and keeps refreshingly loyal to its essentially downbeat vision of life. There is nothing forced in Huston’s well-paced touch and his embracing of the ordinariness of the drama and the lives of the characters. Because for both of them what we see in this film – and it ain’t much – is still clearly the high point of their life. Just getting into the ring and being beat (and only one fight in the film ends with one of our heroes winning – and even then he’s unaware of his win, he’s so punchdrunk) makes them something rather than nothing. These small moments are the best they can hope for.

Because both men have lives of nothingness in front of them. Keach’s Tully is a man whose best years are already behind them, but keeps up a touching air of hope and belief that maybe that could change, even while he drunkenly stumbles from one moment to the next. And maybe he did have something in the past – but he certainly doesn’t have something to come. Keach captures this superbly – like a reliable pro embracing what he feels might be the highlight of his career – investing Tully with a gentleness but also touch of fantasy, a man who can’t quite accept where his life is, but despite a lack of bitterness he’s still a man balancing fantasies. 

Jeff Bridges makes a perfect balance to this amiable failure of a man as Ernie, a young man who may well have more promise than Tully but lacks any sense of personal drive. He’s a friendly but empty shell. While Tully at least goes through spells of wanting success – even if he drifts and falls into alcoholic patches of non-achievement and becomes lost in recollections – Ernie has no desire. He’ll allow himself to be put forward but will do no work at all to push himself forward. He’s a young man with no hurry, a man who seems destined to never achieve anything because he has no desire to do so. It’s a great performance of amiable emptiness from Bridges.

But then you hope that Ernie won’t be heading to the alcoholism that consumes Tully and his romantic interest Orma. Played by an Oscar-nominated Susan Tyrell, Orma is the picture of a failed life, a semi-bloated, rambling alcoholic who oscillates between small insights and far more common drunken ramblings and bitter drunken whining but believes strongly in what she does. Huston’s film places her firmly as much of a drifter through life as Ernie in her way, taking up with Tully while her lover serves prison time – and moving easily and with little impact from one domestic set-up to another. Tyrell and Keach give outstandingly strong performances of drunkenness, never over-playing and totally convincing in their slurred speech, attempts to not appear as drunk as they are and emotional swings from calm to sudden and consuming fury.

But then what is there to look forward to in this life than the next drink? Certainly not the fights. For all the dreams of trainer Ruben (Nicolas Colosanto – very good) to find the next big thing, every fight we see is a tragic and painful affair mostly ending in defeat. Ruben drives carfuls of beaten, ring fodder from place to place, watches them get duffed up and then takes them home all the while dreaming of a title shot. It is dreams shared by Tully – even while we watch his slow, alcoholic fuelled body struggle to get through a few minutes of shadow boxing.

But then that’s the message of Fat City the anti-Rocky – and probably more realistic for it. Huston;s simple touch and pure vision help to make this one of his finest films, his unfussy and naturalistic camera encouraging truthful and powerful performances from his leads. And every small moment is full of it, including a marvellous wordless sequence that sees Tully’s Mexican opponent arrive in town (on a rundown bus), wordlessly check into a motel, piss blood and then head to the ring to be (only just) beaten – a moment of victory so fleeting and small it barely counts (and is only a hiatus on Tully’s return to shambling from bar to bar on the streets). The American Dream is a great thing – but for many people it’s just that: a dream.

The Boxer (1997)

Daniel Day-Lewis returns from 14 years in prison in this passionate but obvious film about the Troubles in Ireland, The Boxer

Director: Jim Sheridan

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis (Danny Flynn), Emily Watson (Maggie), Brian Cox (Joe Hamill), Ken Stott (Ike Weir), Gerard McSorley (Harry), David Hayman (Hamill’s aide), Ciaran Fitzgerald (Liam)

Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Sheridan collaborated before this on the stirring, passionate and angry In the Name of the Father, a film that acutely analysed the impact of the Troubles on ordinary people. That film was about a miscarriage of justice that ruined lives. This film tries to cover similar ground, but somehow the force of the narrative never really comes together as much as it should.

The Boxer himself Danny Flynn (Daniel Day-Lewis) is released from prison after 14 years, due to his peripheral involvement with the IRA. He’s guilty for sure, but has played the game inside and refused to name names. He comes out still in love with Maggie (Emily Watson) – but she is married to another man currently in prison (putting her out of bounds by the code pushed by the IRA). Making things more complex, her father Joe (Brian Cox) is a leading IRA man currently part of negotiations with the British government. Danny and his former trainer Ike (Ken Stott), now a struggling alcoholic, decide to reopen the local boxing gym, making it a denomination free facility for all the community. But their efforts to try and build bridges are not welcomed by all – not least local IRA enforcer Harry (Gerard McSorley) who makes it his mission to destroy Danny.

Why does The Boxer not work as well it should do? It’s got nothing to do with the commitment of the cast, all of whom offer excellent performances. Day-Lewis, inevitably, spent almost three years in preparation learning to be a boxer. It’s just a shame that the script doesn’t really give anyone here something interesting to play with. Instead it makes fairly familiar points about the dangers when we let hatred govern our lives, and carefully sorts and packages most of its characters into goodies and baddies, while making sure in every single scene we are always told exactly what we should be thinking and feeling.

It’s a flaw that I’ve often found in other of Sheridan’s films. He’s a passionate but rather blunt director, full of righteous anger and a determination to make films that carry a social message. But he often makes these points without subtlety or imagination. Here we get an Ireland shot almost completely in a washed-out blue, with the tensions of a community increasingly simplified down into rotten apples playing on the fears and resentments of different groups to continue the spiral of hate.

In the middle of this, Sheridan places a love story between Day-Lewis and Watson’s character that both of them play with a tender commitment and an emotional vulnerability, but which never really invests the audience. It always feels too heavily built on cinematic contrivance – with its long separation, new relationships and social obstacles put in the way. Much as Day-Lewis and Watson give it their all, they never manage to make it feel anything other than it is – a rather tired “movie” love story, that moves it characters through familiar beats.

More interesting than this by far are the real tensions in a community that is tired of violence and wants to move on, but keeps on getting dragged back into old ways because there is simply too much history to overcome. The most interesting character by far is Brian Cox’s IRA bigwig, a man carrying a burden of blood from the past but has an actual desire to see the country change. A film about a man like this, trying to walk a tightrope between negotiations with the British and keeping his own furious foot-soldiers in line (when all they want to do is to bomb something) would have carried real impact. Sadly, it’s too often relegated to the margins of the story while the film follows the immediate social impact of Danny trying to find a third way between war and surrender.

Peaceful co-operation is what Danny wants, and the gym for all people in the Belfast community is how he intends to go about it. Boxing itself is peripheral to the film – what really matters is that idea of bringing people together, of giving them something they can all own and feel some pride in. It’s an idea that Ike believes in above all things, and the prospect of recreating it with Danny’s release from prison gives his life real meaning (Ken Stott is very good as a character who is something of a cliché but still carries a real emotional wallop). Ike and Danny’s vision offers the community a possibility of moving on – something some are not ready to take on.

Not least Harry, played by a quietly fuming Gerard McSorley, prowling scenes like a man who can’t wait to hit someone. The film does at time suggest that there are “good” IRA and “bad” IRA chaps (with Harry firmly in the bad), but it does at least show that these extremists are a danger to everyone, not least the people they claim to protect. Harry’s prejudice towards Danny is motivated above all by his fear of Ireland’s way of life changing, and in that way it forms a decent expression of the film’s core message about the difficulty – but essentialness – of moving on.

Sheridan’s film is a cry for hope and opportunity at a difficult time – and its alarming watching it now to remember what a ghastly place Northern Ireland was at this time, when it’s so well known today as the Game of Thrones backlot. It’s just a shame that the story feels like such a – well – story. The film feels like a slightly over-cooked melodrama, and as the character clashes you expect and the twists you can see coming start to work their way into the narrative, it feels like the central story of a man wanting to make a better life for himself and his neighbourhood gets lost in the mix.

And it does. That’s the basic weakness of The Boxer in the end. For all of Day-Lewis’ skill and Watson’s emotional truth, their story just ends up feeling not that important, you feel that the more interesting things are happening on the margins: Cox’s IRA man feels more worthy of a film, while Stott gets some of the most electric moments of emoting. Sheridan’s film has fire in it, but it ends up burning up his main narrative, while the story relies too heavily on melodrama and cliché. Eventually it fizzles out and you end up not feeling as outraged as you should. Where the true story of In the Name of the Father helped control Sheridan’s spoon-feeding tendencies, here the fictional story allows full reign for the sort of narrative twists that end up feeling a little too tired and obvious.

Creed II (2018)

Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan take to the ring once more in Rocky IV/Creed remake Creed II

Director: Steven Caple Jr

Cast: Michael B Jordan (Adonis Creed), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Tessa Thompson (Bianca Taylor), Dolph Lundgren (Ivan Drago), Florian Munteanu (Viktor Drago), Phylicia Rashad (Mary Anne Creed), Andre Ward (Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler), Wood Harris (Tony “Little Duke” Evers), Brigitte Nielsen (Ludmila Drago), Milo Ventimiglia (Robert Balboa), Russell Hornsby (Buddy Marcelle)

After eight films, in a franchise that has been running for over 40 years, you have to ask if there are any original stories left to tell in the Rocky universe. The answer? Yes there probably are. Does this film tell one? Well no not really, even if there are moments where you feel it wants to. Instead it basically gives us the formula we expected going into it.

Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) is finally heavyweight champion of the world – but why is he so glum? Maybe because he still can’t seem to shake off the shadow of his deceased father Apollo Creed. So he finds it hard to resist when Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the man who killed Apollo, emerges from disgrace in the Ukraine (I’m not sure the makers of this film realise that the Ukraine is different country to Russia). Drago brings with him his super-fighter son Viktor (Florian Munteanu, virtually mute for the whole film) who challenges Adonis to a title fight. Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) doesn’t approve and wants nothing to do with it. Adonis’ pregnant wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) isn’t sure it’s a good idea. But Adonis gives it a go – and is left hospitalised after a mauling, though Viktor is disqualified in the fight on a technicality. Adonis has to rebuild his confidence from nothing, lay to rest his daddy issues and, of course, take on Viktor in a rematch – stop me if you have heard any of this before.

Because you almost certainly have. This is a film that repackages themes from Creed, the basic plot structure of Rocky IV ,and mixes in elements from several other films to come up with a sort of Frankenstein’s monster that feels familiar rather than fresh. Practically every beat can be predicted in advance, and there are no surprises or challenges to your expectations. Essentially everything plays out so closely to what you might expect, and is so clearly signposted in the film, that it’s almost impossible to spoil. 

Which is a shame as there is a better, more intelligent film in here which is thrashing around trying to get out. There was a film to be made here about the shadows fathers cast over us. After all, Adonis and Viktor are basically fighting the battles of their fathers and adopted fathers rather than their own. For Adonis in particular, his struggles to live in the shadow of his father is hammered home with decreasing subtly as the film goes on. Director Steven Caple Jnr was clearly so pleased with his framing of a shot where Adonis trains while a window with a picture of his father towers above him that he repeated it several times in the film. It’s as far as the film goes to questioning the wisdom of these people being weighed down by legacies.

Because this is a film that is trying to have its cake and eat it. All of the characters close to Adonis oppose his first fight with Viktor – Rocky even tells him it’s not his fight – but come the second fight all these characters are cheering him on in the rematch. It seems the only way to escape your father’s shadow… is to climb deeper under it. (Interesting note: all references to Creed being the son of a girlfriend of Creed’s rather than with his wife are deleted in the film, which feels odd.)

You know what would have been interesting? Perhaps Adonis thinking he doesn’t need to win the fight to match his father’s achievements. Or perhaps Adonis deciding that fighting alone proved his point, and he didn’t need to match Rocky’s success in Rocky IV. Or deciding that he didn’t need to rise to the bait. Instead the film shows him pushing against his father’s legacy – and finally doubling down on it in order to create his own legacy. Thinking about it doesn’t make a load of sense.

It would also have been nice if the intervening years had changed Ivan Drago in some way – but he’s established very early on as a villain, and that’s it. Of course this is partly due to Lundgren’s limitations as an actor – wisely it’s nearly half an hour before Ivan speaks, and he does only one scene in English – but it would have been nice if Drago perhaps expressed some regret to suggest he has changed in some way since 1986. Viktor has an equally unclear trajectory – Ivan’s determination to reclaim glory via his son seems to be leading towards some bust up between them, but it never does (is it just me or does Viktor seem like he almost hates his domineering father?). The film tries to pay this off with a moment of familial affection between the two but it comes from nowhere and seems unclear.

So the story is predictable. So predictable by the way, that the film seriously sags in the middle as we wait (with no tension) for Adonis to decide he will get into the ring again and fight Viktor. It also has a slightly manipulative relationship between Bianca and Adonis (Tessa Thompson is wasted again in a bit of a nothing role – and her musician character is saddled with some of the worst music you’ll ever hear). But it’s still a well made film. The fight scenes in the ring are of course excellent as always. The main actors are all good – Jordan is very convincing and Stallone continues to get a load of pathos from the ageing Rocky.

But it’s just a little bit dull and familiar. There is too much of the same old same old here. Where are the new ideas? Even all these father themes were explored to a conclusion in Creed – why retread it all again? What does this do that is new and different – nothing really. It’s another chapter in their lives. But nothing else. And with the birth of Adonis’ daughter we’ve got to get ready for a whole new series of films in 30 years, as Amora Creed takes on Clubber Lang’s grandson’s nephew in Kid Creed. Or something like that.

Creed (2015)

Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan keep the flag flying in Rocky relaunch Creed

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Michael B Jordan (Adonis Creed), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Tessa Thompson (Bianca), Phylicia Rashad (Mary Anne Creed), Graham McTavish (Tommy Holiday), Wood Harris (Tony “Little Duke” Evans), Ritchie Coster (Pete Sporino), Anthony Bellow (“Pretty” Ricky Conlan)

Remember Rocky IV? It’s a bizarre film that opens with the plot twist of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s rival-turned-friend, slain in the ring by a Russian fighting monstrosity. Well that film, for all its rubbishness, partly redeems itself by being the jumping-off point for this spirited and well-made re-launch of the series. (Strange as it is for a film as grounded as this one to bounce off from such a bizarre piece of 1980s nonsense as Rocky IV.)

Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) is the son of Apollo  Creed from an extramarital affair. Adopted as a young boy by Creed’s widow Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), Creed grows up to be a man who yearns to fight as a boxer – although whether this is motivated by a desire to get closer to his father or to try and outdo him the film subtly plays around with as a major theme. He approaches Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to train him, who eventually reluctantly agrees, inspired by seeing something of himself in the young man. When Creed unexpectantly lands a title shot – while Rocky deals with increasing ill health – both men have to come together to fight for their pride and future. 

Creed is a film that captures what works about this franchise, and repackages basically a very familiar story (this is almost point-for-point a Rocky remake) with a great deal of dynamism. Coogler, a talented and original director, brings imagination and intelligence to essentially pulpy material and makes something old seem new again. It does this while still homaging the previous films (even the rubbish ones!) at several points, from small stills on the walls of Rocky’s restaurant, to bit-part characters, to the marvellously beguiling score that gently riffs on the familiar motifs from the series.

It’s also helped by a fine performance from Michael B Jordan with a pretty much spot-on re-interpretation of the Rocky character in a new form. Jordan’s Creed is impulsive and quick-tempered, but also kind and charming. In fact it’s refreshing to have such a clean-living and well-brought up hero centring a film! Jordan gets some intelligent and subtle character work over Creed’s mixed feelings for his father: both resentful of never knowing him and also desperate to gain a sort of posthumous approval. It’s a basic daddy-problems story line but it’s done with a lot of subtlety.

Stallone’s performance as the ageing, slightly world-weary, lonely Rocky is another stand-out. This film’s Rocky is punched out, weighted down by life and unable to get over the sadness of his wife’s death; he sees young Creed as both a chance to find a new family and a reminder of his guilt over Apollo’s death. It’s a fine performance he gives here, detailed, moving and pretty much perfectly judged, with real moments of humour among the pathos. There is also an extraordinarily subtle make-up job on Stallone to make him appear far weaker and vulnerable than he actually is. It’s probably his best performance since the original film.

Coogler’s direction is spot-on, the pacing of the film is pretty much perfect. He shoots the fight scenes with particular freshness, the camera darting in and around the fighters as they beat each other in the ring. This immediacy adds a lot to these sequences – although the heavily choreographed fights, while great cinema, barely resemble a real boxing match! The film also balances really well both the training montages (many of which affectionately homage similar sequences from the early films) with a sensitive and well-constructed romance plotline between Creed and singer Bianca (well played by Tessa Thompson, who makes a lot of what is on paper quite an underwritten part).

It’s not perfect, don’t get me wrong. The decision to cast actual boxers in pivotal roles doesn’t always pan out, not least Anthony Bellow as Creed’s title rival (surely it’s easier to train up an actor than try to teach a boxer to act). For the English viewers it’s hard not to feel a few sniggers at the slightly strange sight of a title fight taking place at Goodison Park of all places (surely this film is the closest any Everton fan has got to seeing major silverware). 

But its affectionate reworking of the tropes of the series works really well, it’s extremely well-acted, it has intelligent character work for both Creed and Balboa who become fully rounded and intriguing characters, and it’s very well directed. It becomes a film about the importance of family as much as it is about legacy, about the two lead characters having to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones and build a new family. For all that the events in the film are pretty close to a straight re-tread of Rocky, this is such a lovely, heartfelt film it’s hard not to like it a lot.

Rocky IV (1985)

Sly Stallone takes on the towering Dolph in Cold War ending boxing fable Rocky IV

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Talia Shire (Adrian Balboa), Burt Young (Paulie Pennino), Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed), Dolph Lundgren (Ivan Drago), Brigitte Nielsen (Ludmilla Drago), Tony Burton (“Duke” Evers), Michael Pataki (Nicolai Koloff)

By 1985, Rocky Balboa had come from behind to overcome adversity through sheer willpower no fewer than three times. We’d seen him come from obscurity to fight Apollo Creed, lose his money, fight Creed again, win, get shamed in the ring and lose his belt and trainer on the same night, then come storming back to beat Mr T. We’d had training montages aplenty as, for every major fight, Rocky needed to learn how to box in a new way. We’d seen him take punishment like nobody’s business in the ring as better opponents pummelled him before coming up against Rocky’s iron will. So in Rocky IV we got… well, more or less exactly all that. Again. But in Russia.

The ideas had gone, the inspiration had tanked. There was nothing new to do. Rocky IV is a very short film – and it could easily be shorter again if the padding had been removed. Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) takes on Russian uber-fighter Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in the ring in a charity match. Drago is a mountain of Soviet athletic engineering and he beats Creed so badly, Creed dies. In Rocky’s arms of course. So Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) does what a man has to do – he’ll fly to Siberia and he’ll fight Drago on his own turf, all to avenge the memory of Creed. And for American pride. And along the way he’ll only go and get the Russians to rethink this whole Cold War thing.

Rocky IV is so painfully short of ideas, you’ll feel like you’ve seen it even before you’ve seen it. In fact, at least 10 minutes of it you have. The film opens with essentially a complete recap of Rocky III, including the closing scenes of that film. Later Rocky goes driving to the airport. Along the way he hits the radio in his Lamborghini (the product placement in this film is shockingly crude) and listens to the whole of No Easy Way Out by Robert Tepper, while the film plays a montage that recaps all three of the previous films. The scene might as well end with the title of the song appearing in the bottom left hand corner like an old MTV video. (Stallone’s rolodex was obviously well thumbed, as James Brown later pops up to deliver a rendition of the whole of Living in America.) This sort of stuff pads the plot absurdly.

Either side of that, we have two long training montages comparing the homespun honesty of Rocky’s training with the naughty, doping inspired, technological training of Drago. But then this is not a subtle film. Any film that opens with two boxing gloves – one American, one Soviet – flying towards each other and exploding isn’t exactly pulling its punches on the subtlety front. The political commentary in the film is laughably naïve, from Creed’s inane chatter about American pride, to the laughable depiction of the Soviet officials as distant Bond villains, to Rocky’s closing speech after his victory (spoilers) with its infamous “If I can change, you can change!” refrain. Did the makers think they were putting a hammer to the Berlin Wall here or something?

Most of the rest of the film moves between padding and the bizarre. Almost every single scene ends with a freeze frame, possibly one of the most clunky visual devices you could hope to see. Stallone as director focuses his camera with such loving intensity on his own chiselled frame that it’s almost a sort of camp classic. Some of the conversation and physicality between Creed and Rocky is almost laughable in its inadvertent homoeroticism. 

Then there is plenty of dumb stuff as well. I’d totally forgotten this film showpieces a robot servant whom Rocky’s brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young) spends most the film treating like a hen-pecking wife. This robot is a bizarre sci-fi addition to the story, which seems to have walked in from a different film.

The fighting when it comes is pretty good, I’ll give it that. Yes literally everything in the boxing ring is so predictable you could write it down in advance, but as always there is something quite moving about watching Rocky take such punishment to emerge as victor. Heck even the Soviet crowd start chanting his name (take that Cold War!). But it’s fine. Drago isn’t even a character (he doesn’t even really have any lines), but that doesn’t really matter as its Lundgren’s size and strength that sells the show (he towers over famously titchy Stallone).

Rocky IV is predictable hokum, that offers precisely zero surprises and must have taken a wet weekend to write. Its bizarre robot sub plot, matched with the endless music videos, montages and flashbacks to old movies, shows that the well was pretty much dry by the time this film came around. But you know the formula still sorta works, and you still cheer as Rocky turns an epic pummelling into triumph. Carl Weathers is pretty good, Creed’s death is as strangely affecting as it is totally ludicrous (never in a million years, by the way, would either of the fights in this film be allowed to continue) but Rocky IV’s okay. And of course it ended the Cold War.