THE FIGHT - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Eight

THE FIGHT is the directorial debut from actress and comedian Jessica Hynes.  She has crafted a nuanced, quietly thoughtful script and created a drama that surprises and moves.  What's even more impressive is that she shows a real flair for framing her shots and capturing wildlife and landscape in a suburban setting.  The result is a film that is so much more than a standard boxing film. In fact, the title is best seen as allegorical - yes, the protagonist does turn to amateur boxing to regain some control and pride in herself - but this isn't a film that focuses on training montages or fight scenes. Rather THE FIGHT is about the struggle just to survive life - the emotional pressures of extended family, the remembered and reinforced cycle of abuse, the struggle to connect. 

As the film opens we meet Tina (Hynes), a mother of three in a seemingly happy marriage, struggling to find time between her home life and working a full time job. Her parents' marriage is falling apart. Her daughter Emma is being bullied at school, apparently by the daughter of Tina's old school nemesis.  And in between all this Tina finds an escape by entering an amateur boxing competition, mentored by a character played by Cathy Tyson (great to see her back on our screens.)

What I love about this film is that it overturns our expectations.  For a start, the men are basically good guys - and the emotional and physical violence is perpetrated and survived by women.  This is story of multi-generational hurt and anger that creates yet more hurt and anger - but no character is a simple villain.  Instead, this is a film filled with patience, compassion and understanding. And this is portrayed by four strong female actors - Hynes, Rhona Mitra as her old schoolfriend, Anita Dobson as her mother, and the actress who plays Mitra's daughter.  The focus on the female experience of bullying, addiction, acceptance is rare and welcome.

I also love Hynes feel for pacing and framing.  There's a wonderful shot where Tina's mother catches her father living at Tina's house and it's framed as a split screen with Tina inside, the father outside, both caught in the act.  And another where Tina is jogging through a street of row-houses and we pan up to see a majestic aqueduct. Or another where Tina is apparently in a beautiful field of lavender but it's really just her tiny front garden.  And then there's Hynes ability to just let the actors do their thing without over scripting a scene. I'm thinking of one in particular in a river between two women that's just so delicately balanced and moving...

I don't want to say more for fear of spoiling the plot. Suffice to say that THE FIGHT is a truly impressive debut and that I can't wait to see what Hynes does next. 

THE FIGHT has a running time of 91 minutes. The film does not yet have a commercial release date.

BLEED FOR THIS - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 5

BLEED FOR THIS is a deeply mediocre entry into the underdog boxing genre - a film that feels like it wants to THE FIGHTER when it grows up.  It's a movie filled with caricatures rather than characters, hammy performances, and adds nothing to the august cinematic tradition of shooting boxing matches.  

The film tells the story of real-life 1980s boxing champion Vinny Pazienza, who suffered an horrific car crash and was told he'd never walk again. He eschewed neck fusion for a risky "halo" metal brace drilled into his head.  And while the slightest knock to that brace might have rendered him paraplegic, Vinny disregarded medical advice to train in his basement, brace and all.  He went on to win a title bout in his hometown, coming from behind, surviving ten rounds.  

The problem is that no-one in this retelling feels like a fully fleshed out authentic character.  Vinny's mother is simply a prayerful nervous Catholic - his sister is simply a nagging wife - his brother-in-law is just a dumbfuck - his dad is a cigar-chomping vulgarian - all the family scenes feature a loud Italian family eating lasagne and talking over each other.  This is the stuff of deep deep cliche.  The women Vinny dates get short-changed too - they're just interchangeable totty. The director is only interested in them insofar as he can relive some kind of sub-Scorsese vision of Vinny showering them with casino chips.  The lead characters don't fair any better.  Vinny's coach is a washed-up alcoholic whose only motive and purpose is to be Vinny's coach. There's no journey here - no emotional growth or nuance - compare and contrast to Clint Eastwood's character in MILLION DOLLAR BABY.  And what about Vinny himself?  He evidently has a tolerance for physical pain and a single-minded determination to win. But why?  Where did it come from? How does he sustain it through the crash? We never get any glimpse into his emotional life or thought process. And the risible attempt to wrap up his journey with a nice bow in the final interview of the film just makes no sense at all.

SOUTHPAW

SOUTHPAW is an earnest but risibly cliched and over-acted boxing drama written by Kurt Sutter (SONS OF ANARCHY) and directed by Antoine Fuqua (TRAINING DAY).  The movie starts Jake Gyllenhaal in a typically intense, hyper-realistic portrayal of a working-class kid turned successful boxing champion.  He's married to the love of his life (Rachel McAdams) and has a young daughter which is all so far so ROCKY. But pretty soon, his wife is caught up in a shooting and dies in one of those over-scored over-dramatic moments that will serve as the lynchpin for the rest of the film, in which our broken hero tries to resurrect his career and win back his daughter from the evil social services. His flashy manager (50 Cent - actually ok as an actor) having left him, our hero winds up begging a wizened old boxing manager played by Forrest Whitaker to train him.  Because as in ROCKY, the best training is low-rent, austere hard work on the worn-out mats of a back-street gym.  

iPad Round-Up 6 - WARRIOR

WARRIOR is a movie that stands in the shadow of THE FIGHTER and looks pale by comparison. It also features two brothers as competitive fighters, one of whom is a "troubled", and a parent who is poisonous and controlling.  And is with THE FIGHTER, the fighting in the ring is secondary to the emotional conflict outside the ring, leading to an eventual reconciliation.  Moreover, both films show the impact of an intrusive media.  Where THE FIGHTER is steeped in an authentic locale, and powered by three superlative performances, WARRIOR feels contrived, emotionally manipulative, and powered by brawn rather than brains.  Nick Nolte, as the alcoholic father, received an Oscar nomination for his role, but this felt undeserved to me.  And as for the two brother, Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton have both done better work.  This is the kind of movie in which two brothers enter a mixed martial arts contest and, no shit, they end up facing off in the final.  Puh-lease.

WARRIOR was released in autumn 2011 and is available to rent and own.

THE FIGHTER - Bale is outstanding, the rest is cliché and caricature

THE FIGHTER is a good old-fashioned boxing under-dog movie, with all the clichés and genre-conventions that go with the territory. 1. You get a boxer. He's scrabbling around getting beaten up for half the film. He gets a title fight chance - there's a training montage - he wins against all odds. 2. The boxer has a trainer who is self-destructive and threatens to derail the boxer's career. But the boxer really does need him and so they reconcile before the title fight. 3. The boxer has a girlfriend. She really believes in him and protects his interests against all the liggers and users who try to derail him. It's been the same story ever since ROCKY.

In this version, The Boxer is real-life Boston fighter, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg). He's the stereotypical good guy, but hen-pecked by a manipulative, over-bearing mother (Melissa Leo) and his seven sisters. The Self-Destructive Trainer is Micky's step-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Dicky used to be a fighter too, and is living off the memory of the time he supposedly knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard. Like many addicts, he's developed a charming, witty, winning personality out of survival instinct - as a crack-addict he's constantly having to charm his way back into his family's affections. Together, Micky's family put him in shitty fights, needing the money, and emotionally blackmail him from getting outside help. The Girlfriend is Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), a feisty waitress who sits in Micky's corner, but essentially, rather than liberating him from his family, she just provides another set of commands. Coupled with its straightforward genre-convetions, THE FIGHTER has a straightforward, linear plot. We meet Micky as a third-rate journeyman boxer - see Charlene force a split with the family - only to unite before the climactic title fight. Nothing new there.

The resulting film gives us no surprises. You can predict how it's going to work, and who's going to do what. Most of the characters are caricatures. Silent, frustrated Micky. The evil manipulative mother - a far less subtle portrayal than Livia Soprano, and practically on a level with the animated Mother Gothel in Disney's TANGLED. The Feisty Girlfriend. And the performances are pretty mono-dimensional too. I think Wahlberg has been unfairly blamed for being "absent" - that's what his role calls for. But I really don't get all the praise for Melissa Leo and Amy Adams. Their characters are just crude portrayals of one-note harpies. Maybe I should blame the writing, but honestly, there's nothing demanding or insightful here. Only Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund is given a character with real depth, contradiction and development. He's a man trapped inside a delusion - a fictional character called "the pride of Lowell" that he performs for his fellow townsfolk, crack addicts and inmates. Sure he plays up to the cameras, when the HBO documentarians come to town, but he's playing up to reality too. As the movie unfolds, we see him confronted with his delusion and move towards some kind of self-knowledge. It's a superb piece of writing, and a bravura performance from Bale - as broad as the Joker in the "Pride of Lowell" character, yet also reflective and quiet as the reforming Dicky. Dicky is the real Fighter in this film - and the real emotional centre of the movie. When we see the final frame static capture of the brothers celebrating Micky's triumph, it's Dicky's face we look to. It's his triumph to have reformed, to have been let back into Micky's corner, and to have become a big enough man to allow his brother his success, and to be proud of him. Bale should be getting all the awards this season - but for Best Actor, rather than Supporting Actor.

I guess I've already hinted at what I perceive to be the weaknesses in the script - the broad characterisations and resistance to pushing the envelope. I think there are also real weaknesses with David O Russell's (THREE KINGS, I HEAR HUCKABEES) directorial choices. Essentially, I feel that Russell is living in the shadow of Darren Aronofsky in this picture. After the success of THE WRESTLER, Aronofsky was down to direct THE FIGHTER and lives on as its executive producer. A lot of the way in which Russell approaches the material seems to be "Aronofsky-lite" - a sort of pastiche of the filming style used in THE WRESTLER. It's all hand-held cameras, faux-documentary intimacy and visible grain. Which is ironic because as much as this film tries hard to capture the clothes, accents, and gritty reality of 1980s Lowell, with a script trading to high in cliché, it really could've been set anywhere. Worst of all, David O Russell bottles out of doing anything interesting with the boxing scenes, with the convenient excuse of using the HBO crews to re-create the pay-per-view look.

THE FIGHTER opened in 2010 in the US, the Philippines and Canada. It is currently on release in Singapore, Greece, Australia and Iceland. It opens this weekend in the UK and Brazil. It opens on February 11th in Portugal, Russia, Poland and Turkey. It opens on February 25th in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Norway. It opens in March in Malaysia, Lithuania, Sweden and the Netherlands. It opens on April 7th in Germany.

London Film Festival Day 7 - TYSON

TYSON is a documentary biopic about the legendary heavyweight boxing champion. The movie takes the form of an extended, frank and open interview with Tyson interspersed with archive footage of bouts and press conferences. Unusually, we don’t get any talking heads – sports writers, ex-wives etc – to give us an alternative perspective. With most subjects, this would have led to charges of bias, lack of perspective and hagiography. But that isn’t the case here because Tyson is incredibly open and self-critical and proves his best judge. The documentary is also very well edited.

The central thesis of the movie – and of Tyson – is that he was an insecure, bullied boy who grew up in the roughest of neighbourhoods where all he learnt was how to hustle. Thrown into juvenile detention, he would have ended up like all his schoolfriends – in prison for life, dead or a junkie – had it not been for a chance encounter with a man who taught him boxing and passed him on to trainer Cos D’Amato when he got out. By the age of 20, D’Amato had rebuilt Tyson from the ground up, rebuilding his self-confidence and turning his into a disciplined world-class boxer. The tragedy is that just as Tyson was unifying the title, D’Amato died, leaving him adrift and subject to “leeches”.

It’s testament to Tyson’s perspective that he never blames other people for his misfortune. He blames himself for letting leeches use him for his money and for being too young and immature to get married to Robin Givens. He blames himself for losing his title both before and after his prison sentence for rape – he was out of shape and deserved to lose. He blames himself that his two wives left him – he shouldn’t have been promiscuous. Indeed, he only seems to be genuinely angry at two people: the woman he was convicted of raping (he still protests his innocence) and Don King – who stole his money. Still, despite all the mellowness in maturity, the film-makers are careful to insert choice pieces of news footage showing Tyson completely losing it to show us how quickly his temper can flare up and how savage he could be.

Aside from his notorious personal life, the documentary is the most interesting when Tyson explains how he psyches himself up before a match and talks us through his most famous bouts (including the infamous ear-biting scene). I was most into boxing in the late 80s when I was a small kid, hanging out with my older cousins. Big fights were major occasions and we’d all gather at some ungodly hour – the whole family cheering. Those were the glory days for Tyson, when you could talk about his ferocity without any unpleasant double-meaning. It was great to see that footage again and hear how Tyson felt when it was happening. It was also pretty tragic to see him transformed into a show-pony, showing up in poor shape to matches for pay checks. I may be biased, and out of nostalgia, reluctant to give Tyson a hard time, but I found this documentary to be a fascinating and sympathetic look at a great pugilist and self-confessed flawed man. It’ll be interesting to see if it catches any flack for having no accusers on screen other than the man himself.

TYSON played Cannes and London 2008.

BLUE BLOOD - new movie of the week

BLUE BLOOD is a fantastic no-budget documentary by Stevan Riley covering the run up to the Oxford vs Cambridge Varsity Boxing Match. Minor, but inconsequential, gripes include the amateurish feel of the DV camera footage and a hammy pre-credits prologue, complete with Oscar Wilde quotation, beating drums and centuries-old rivalry. But once the film gets going it's absolutely gripping.

In the first half hour, we are introduced to a bunch of Freshers trying out for the team. They are largely a bunch of charming oddballs - and as such, to my mind, pretty much representative of Oxford life. We have a nerdy-looking philosophy student called Kavanagh; a foppish fine art student called Charlie; an aggressively ambitious unconsciously funny USAF officer called Justin; a serial reject from the OU rugby team called Boiler; and a nice ordinary lad called Fred! All of them bar Justin look unlikely boxers, and all of them, including Justin, are to a certain extent objects of hillarity in the first half hour.

However, we see them train hard and get to know them and like them. As a result, when they face their bouts in the second half hour we feel every punch they sustain and will them to win. Eventually, some make it to the Varsity match and win the coveted Blues. I have to say that I was as bound up in their victories and losses as I was watching the original ROCKY film. (For all you ROCKY-haters, I should explain that the last sentence is about as high as my praise for a boxing film can get.) My admiration for all these young lads was immense, as well as my admiration for the committed coaching team that has to take these raw recruits and turn them around in a mere academic year.

So, while it may be rather hard to find in a cinema near you, I strongly recommend that you go out of your way to find this documentary. It delivers far more entertainment, emotional engagement and insight than any other movie on release this week.

BLUE BLOOD is on release in the UK.

ROCKY BALBOA - Bina007's review

Earlier this week, Nikolai gave an emotional response to ROCKY BALBOA that fully encapsulated the emotional high I received from watching the flick. To that end, it's a brilliantly insightful review. But after a few days to come down off the high, I thought I'd chip in my thoughts. Bit first, a disclaimer. I love ROCKY. I had no beef with the decision of the Academy to give ROCKY the Best Picture nod in 1977 - over the heads of TAXI DRIVER, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and NETWORK. To me ROCKY is just a brilliant film - great characters, great narrative arc, great emotional pull. Sometimes a pop. film just gets it right. Not every movie has to be BABEL.

To me, the Rocky movies are about an under-dog pulling himself up through sheer hard work and endurance. It is the American Dream. The exhileration we feel when Rocky wins a fight is down to the fact that we know how hard he has trained to get there. And it's not even about the winning: it's about staying the distance.

Naturally, after the farce of ROCKY V I was worried about the follow up but those fears were groundless. Sty Stallone proves once again that he is one of the unsung great screen-writers of our time. He places Rocky in an entirely believable situation. He's doing fine for cash, running a fancy restaurent and posing for cheesy pictures with his fans. But he's a lonely widower, estranged from his son, and feeling at loose ends without the boxing. To that end, ROCKY BALBOA is a movie about a man getting back to what makes him a man - rather than a shadow - and the movie is full of tremendous speeches about what it is to be a free individual and to have self-respect. Sly Stallone's skill is that they don't ever sound preachy - they always feel natural to the moment. The classic example is Rocky's speech to the boxing commission where he is asking for their permission to fight again. A moving and profound monologue springs out of a natural situation.

Fans will be sad to find Rocky's wife Adrian has died of cancer but I think will be satisfied with Rocky's shy courtship of an old neighbourhood friend. They will also, I think, find the relationship with Rocky's son nicely handled - providing the emotional heart of the film. Some of the narrative choices felt a little more forced. Rocky's new squeeze has a delinquent son who will be reformed by Rocky's patronage - this felt a little too DANGEROUS MINDS for me. Just too sickly sweet. And in terms of the new characters, I was a little disappointed in Rocky's opponent, Mason "The Line" Dixon. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that where once we had evil Communist robo-boxers, we now have a whiny, 2-D, largely untested champion and a far more politically correct ending. Shame.

Cinematically, where ROCKY BALBOA works is in pandering to the nostalgia of the fans. A lot of the old kitsch seventies sound-track is included and the basic narrative arc of the film is the same. At the end, we even have some crazy credits showing fans doing the trade-mark Rocky air-punching atop the stairs. This stuff was adrenaline-pumping twenty years ago and it still works, thirty years later. The weaker parts were the avowedly new shots. The fight features a lot of splicing between colour and black and white scenes with a little SIN CITY style colour high-lighting for fun. Frankly, this looks okay but ROCKY BALBOA just doesn't need it. It's an old-fashioned film with old-fashioned virtues: solid story, memorable characters. You don't need to be try to emulate newer shooting techniques. ROCKY was never RAGING BULL.

Still, this is all quibbling around the edges of my favourite movie of the year so far. I laughed, I cried, I punched the air, I felt exhilerated. Few movies can do that. Few movies provide a truly visceral and positive experience. And if it seems unthinkable that we will have another ROCKY, at least we can now end with a movie worthy of the franchise, rather than ROCKY V.

ROCKY BALBOA is on release in the US, Canada, Israel, Georgia, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Italy, Norway and Spain. It opens in the UK and Sweden on the 19th and in France, the Netherlands, Estonia and Russia on the 25th. It opens in Belgium on Jan 31st, Iceland and Venezuela on Feb 2nd and in Germany and Austria on the 9th. It opens in Singapore on March 1st, Mexica on March 2nd, Poland on March 9th, Brazil on March 16th, and Japan 21st April.

ROCKY BALBOA - the man, the legend

This review is posted by guest reviewer, Nik, who can usually be found here.

Many of you have doubts. I know you think this franchise is over. You're wondering how he can pull it off at 50-something. You've been hurt by jibes about Rocky in a zimmer-frame. You've lost faith. But my friends, it's not about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit, and still keep moving forward.

He used to be the plucky underdog from the mean streets of the big city. But he took on the champ and he beat him. He used to fight for America, but single-handedly ended the cold war. And now he's fighting age itself. Is he doing it for Adrian? Is he doing it to win the admiration of his prodigal son? No. He's doing it because fighters fight - because he's the Italian Stallion, the people's champion - and he has something to prove to the arrogant Champ, Mason Dixon: that the last thing to age on somebody is their heart.

My friends, it sounds cheesy. Hell it damn well IS cheesy. But I challenge you to sit through this movie and not have broad stripes and white stars pumping through your veins by the end. He challenges ageism and commercialism in sport. He tells us to be ourselves no matter what. He teaches his whiny son a lesson in fighting back when life knocks you down. He takes a kid from the mean streets and teaches him how to love. His genuflection and biblical references before getting into the ring leave us in no doubt that he's down with Jesus. And his big punches hit so hard, they rattle the Champ's ancestors, and teach him a lesson in pride and self-respect. The only type of respect that means a damn in this world.

This film is a love story. Not in weepy nostalgia for Adrian. Not for Rocky or his family or his washed out friends. Not for the city, or for the sport. But for the flag of the United States of America - and for the freedom to the pursuit of happiness that that flag represents. The winner of the fight at the end - as the camera work so finely shows us - is not Mason Dixon, or indeed Rocky Balboa or his fans - the true winner is determination against the odds; pride in the face of adversity; courage in the face of defeat: the American way.

I don't care what your preconceptions are - this is the franchise back at its very best. Yes it's simple. Yes, it's formulaic and predictable. Same music, same shots, same outcomes. But friends, this is the salt of the earth, and it's not lost any of its saltiness. I'm selling you more than a franchise today, more than a movie. I'm selling you a dream. A dream of a country where people are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. A dream of a nation where upward mobility and making it are the rewards of hard work, respect for others and respect for yourself. The dream of the new world.

Put a statue of this man on Ellis Island. Put some flowers on Adrian's grave. God bless Rocky Balboa, and God bless these United States of America.

To read Bina007's review, click here.

ROCKY BALBOA is on release in the US, Canada, Israel, Georgia, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Italy, Norway and Spain. It opens in the UK and Sweden on the 19th and in France, the Netherlands, Estonia and Russia on the 25th. It opens in Belgium on Jan 31st, Iceland and Venezuela on Feb 2nd and in Germany and Austria on the 9th. It opens in Singapore on March 1st, Mexica on March 2nd, Poland on March 9th, Brazil on March 16th, and Japan 21st April.

CINDERELLA MAN - archetypes are really dull

CINDERELLA MAN is a fictionalised account of the career of James J Braddock - an American boxer who survived the Great Depression by staging a famous boxing come-back. The movie opens with a famous quote from Damon Runyan, "In all the history of the boxing game, you'll find no more human interest story to compare with the life narrative of James J Braddock." Maybe that was true at the time, but since then the world has witnessed Mohammad Ali. Comebacks get no bigger than the Rumble in the Jungle: you can find the real thing here.

But I've started all wrong. Despite all appearances, CINDERELLA MAN is not a boxing story but an archetypal story about the importance of family, love and hope. It happens to feature a boxer. The theme is that James Braddock was a decent guy who went back in for the punishment of the ring in order to save his family from starvation and the children from being parcelled out. If Braddock has to be the archetypal rough diamond hero, then his historic opponent, Max Baer, has to be a leering, crude, proud monster. His wife has to be an upright, doughty, loyal matriarch.

The problem is that archetypes make for boring, simplistic cinema. Take the perfect hero that is James Braddock and compare him to Rocky - another washed-up boxer hustling for money in hard economic times. In Rocky II we see how success corrupts Rocky. To contradict F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous quotation, Rocky's "great American life" DOES "have a second act". By contrast, Braddock, we are told at the end of Cinderalla Man, fought bravely in the Second World War. He was a simplistic hero, start to end.

The strength of the Rocky series also lies in the fact that Apollo Creed is not an evil monster (if, in later pictures, Stallone does drift into cold-war steroetypes.) By making Max Baer an evil man, director Ron Howard avoids having to address the issue of how the defeated fighter must feel. He avoids tarnishing Braddock's victory. Personally, I prefer more nuanced films, such as the wonderful South Korean drama, CRYING FIST, that challenge the audience by making us want BOTH fighters to win.

So, what's to like about CINDERELLA MAN? It is photographed with all the lavish care that one expects from a $90 million picture shot by Ron Howard ("A Beautiful Mind"). The boxing scenes are well-shot and derived from the Raging Bull school of cinema. It is filled with the kind of acting talent only double-digit millions and a sure-fire chance at an Oscar can buy: notably Russell Crowe, Renee Zellwegger and Paul Giamatti. It features a great British actor, Paddy Considine, as a radical union-leader and Braddock's best friend. Moreover, while this is undoubetdly "an uplifting family movie" it is no way near as manipulative and saccharine as it could have been given the subject matter and its director. After the travesty of NORTH COUNTRY, we must give thanks for restraint wherever we find it. Having said all this, I found this an uninvolving and over-long film, that pales into comparison with Rocky for feel-good drama, and Crying Fist for intelligent drama.

CINDERELLA MAN went on cinematic release in the US in May 2005 and in Europe in Autumn 2005. It is available on Region 2 DVD. Bizarrely, while the DVD extras includes footage of Norman Mailor, Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer watching the famous Baer/Braddock match, the producers didn't bother actually putting the footage of the whole match on the DVD. It's a real shame, but once again goes to show that this isn't actually a boxing movie at all.

WHEN WE WERE KINGS - The Sorrow and the Pity

WHEN WE WERE KINGS is a documentary that covers the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight boxing bout between Mohammad Ali and George Foreman. Ali, at 32, was written off by all the sports writers, but by means of his innovative "rope-a-dope" technique pulled off a stunning and career-defining success. The documentary, which deservedly won Best Doc. at the 1997 Oscars, successfully captures the tension of the match, despite the fact that we all know the outcome. Interviews with Norman Mailer and George Plimpton give us an insider view to the Ali camp. But the doc., while focusing on a single match, is, in some ways, more successful than Michael Mann's biopic in showing us the "meaning" of Ali's life. It's all here. We get the scrabbling over Ali's earning power, with a young Don King and members of the Nation of Islam with their snouts in the trough. The racial politics are all there too. Ali contrasts the position of the "rich and lazy" oppressed American blacks with the "poor but dignified and free" Africans. Ali believed he was on a mission from God, and that boxing was just the first step....

All this is great stuff, but the real reason for renting or buying this DVD is that the makers have included the complete footage of both the Rumble in the Jungle, and the fight against "Smokin'" Joe Frasier - the Thrilla in Manilla. Watching the rope-a-dope in its entirety is great entertainment, not least seeing Ali verbally taunting Foreman. Foreman was the man with the most powerful punch in boxing but Ali just sat on the ropes, taking punch after punch, all the time saying to George, "that's just not hard enough, George!" Once Foreman was punched out, Ali turned on him, delivering the knock-out punch and claiming the title for himself, for his fans in Africa, and as Ali believed, for God. Watching the Thrilla in Manilla, the appreciation of artistry turns to horror. In sharp contrast with the Rumble, the Thrilla was a nasty, vicious, brutal slug-fest. Neither player could dominate the other and it became a matter of who was in better "condition". In other words, over 15 rounds, who could take the most punishment. Now, I am not saying that it was in this match that Ali took the punch that tipped him into illness. However, seeing him take such punishment you feel that you are seeing a god being brought down into disability. The match makes for compelling but uncomfortable viewing - just like a slow-motion car wreck. You feel sick watching it, yet cannot help admiring the display. There is no greater proof that Ali was the greatest of all time, but what a price to pay.

WHEN WE WERE KINGS is available on Region 1 and 2 DVD.

CRYING FIST - Searing South Korean drama

CRYING FIST is the latest movie from Seung-wan Ryoo, the South Korean movie director who brought us ARAHAN. ARAHAN is a really great post-modern martial arts film - mixing hyper-real action sequences with MTV dialogue and a healthy dose of slapstick.

By contrast, CRYING FIST is a dead serious, straight-up drama telling the story of two men who are in hopeless situations. One is a 43 year old ex-amateur boxer. He is in debt and a loveless marriage, and when his wife kicks him out he is reduced to fighting people in the street for cash. The second man is a young punk who learns to box in prison. He has a lot of aggression, little technical skill, and something to prove to his family. Both lead actors play against type in this film. The ageing boxer is none other than conflicted killer, Mr. OLDBOY, a.ka. actor Choi Min-Sik, who also appears as the nasty Mr. Beak in LADY VENGEANCE. The young punk is played by Seung-Beom Ryoo, the gormless hero from Arahan and the director's kid brother.

The first 90 minutes of the movie show these two men being degraded and defeated. It is painful to watch but compelling all the same - like watching a car crash in slow motion. There is no sentimentality, no deeper message, no sweeping orchestral score as in Ron Howard's CINDERELLA MAN.

In the final half hour, the two men meet in a boxing tournament. The fights are well choreographed but are shot with none of the balletic artistry of RAGING BULL. The director is very clear in communicating his belief that boxing is a nasty, ugly, painful thing to submit yourself to. To my mind, this is not a film arguing that redemption comes through boxing. Rather, the tragedy of these men is that they have so little hope, that boxing seems to them a redemption. The lack of a rip-roaring ROCKY-style final match has been criticised. But I think that it is a strength of the film that there is no good-guy facing off against a bad-guy. We have seen both of these guys treated like shit and want to see them both win. That is what makes the final scenes so engaging.

Overall, this is a movie that I admired more than enjoyed. It was a brave move for the director to steer away from cartoon kung-fu to straight-up boxing drama. It was an unusual move to have us sympathise with both of the protagonists. I found the relentless misery of the first 90 minutes a bit hard to take - but without them I would not have felt the full impact of the final 30 minutes. So I would recommend this movie, but be warned. It is a hard slog.

CRYING FIST was shown at Cannes in May where it won the Critics Prize for Best Film. It is currently on release in Hong Kong and the UK. There is no scheduled release date for Continental Europe or the US.