Review of "Prizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher" a historical drama about one of boxing's first stars
A problematic and helpless movie in which Russell Crowe played a tiny role for some reason.
Jem Belcher (Matt Hugins) grew up in an ordinary 19th century British family and was fascinated from childhood by his grandfather - fist fighter Jack Slack (Russell Crowe). Boy's mother, however, did not support the passion, and tried to protect her son from the brutal martial arts. Already an adult Jem decides to seek his luck in the ring - and under the supervision of trainer Bill (Ray Winston) begins an ascent in a sport that is not even called boxing.
"The Fighter: King of the Ring" is, in a sense, the perfect film for the current Russian box office. Because the fate of this project is as complicated as that of our entire industry, and only such a painful movie could break through all the closed borders. The fact is that The Fighter (which in the original, of course, is not called that at all) finished shooting back in 2021, and since then the film has been in a strange post-production hell. The companies and foundations that funded it have demanded their money back. The crew has been waiting months for the promised payments. Writer and lead actor Matt Hookings took it upon himself to remake the entire picture because he didn't like director Daniel Graham's version. In the end somehow the film was bought by Amazon, but in Russia it somehow came out even before the foreign release - with a changed title, which alludes to the successful drama "The Fighter".
This film, however, has little in common with David O. Russell's film. If anything, "The King of the Ring" is compared to "Rocky" - but not so much in terms of plot as in terms of production. Average actor Matt Hookings wrote the screenplay himself, produced it himself, and got to star in a biopic about a real historical figure who became one of boxing's first stars. It looks like he was trying (at least unknowingly) to repeat the success story of Sylvester Stallone, who similarly rose from the ranks to the ranks through his own tenacity and the hard-earned film about the Underdog fighter. But it's unlikely to come out. Stallone, with a rather modest acting range, has proven to be a surprisingly talented writer of armor-piercing genre stories. Hookings, on the other hand, is not artistically deprived, but as a writer he is utterly helpless. At least as far as his Boyz is concerned.
We often hear these clichés about historical films, saying they were made "according to Wikipedia. Well, The Fighter: King of the Ring is not even based on a Wikipedia article. It's based on the short content of the article, on its headlines. The film moves from scene to scene on its own, without resistance; events simply happen because they have to. Instead of reflection, there are occasional conversations with the character-mentors (grandfather, mother, coach), where everyone speaks exclusively in hackneyed phrases from genre textbooks. "King of the Ring" is a bare formula without substance: it seems to be in place and the haunting ghosts of the past, and the twists and turns with ups and downs, and the final story of overcoming oneself (the hero goes blind in one eye, but still keeps fighting). But it doesn't feel as if the plot episodes are justified by anything other than the fact that they just have to be in a film of this genre. Characters appear and disappear at the stroke of a scripted pen. The colorful story of the real Belcher turns into a sequence of truisms, incoherent episodes from his life, shot in the same annoying "sepia." Because how else to create a historical entourage than to make the whole image brown?
It's clear why this movie is so hard to get out - nobody wants it, except the Russian box office and streaming industry, which is grabbing every chance to fill its endless library. It is unclear what Russell Crowe is doing here. Who, however, disappears from the picture in the first act: do not be fooled by the posters, which declared him almost as the main character.
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