A well-acted, but predictable boxing tale.
Creating a boxing movie that feels original and void of the genre’s numerous, already existing cliches is no easy task, and one that we’ve seen plenty of recent additions to the genre fail to do over the past few years. Unfortunately, Ben Younger’s Bleed For This doesn’t quite manage to elevate itself past any of those standard tropes either, though it does feature two lead performances that could emerge as possible contenders in this year’s packed awards race.
Starring Miles Teller as real life boxer Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza, Bleed For This follows Paz after he comes back from a losing streak to become a world champion in the sport for the second time. He’s then forced to face his most difficult struggle to date shortly afterwards though, this time outside of the ring itself when he’s involved in a brutal car crash that leaves his ability to ever box again in question.
To its credit, Bleed For This’ first act tells a story that usually would have taken up the entire plot of most other boxing movies, as Pazienza comes back from a shameful title loss in Vegas to Roger Mayweather. Asking for one more chance to keep his career going, Vinny is sent to New York to train with Aaron Eckhart’s Kevin Rooney, a legend in the boxing world that knew what it was like at one time to train champions, but whose life has since devolved into drunken nights and rough mornings. Rooney wisely and astutely tells Vinny fairly quickly on into their relationship that he needs to move up not one, but two weight classes in order to keep competing and thus, their training begins.
Younger creates a number of the film’s typical boxing montages with the expected, thumping musical tracks, but surprisingly, then undercuts them with unique sound design tweaks. There’s a number of times in the film, for instance, when the training sequences will just start gaining momentum, before either Younger or one of the film’s characters suddenly cuts the music off. There’s a sense whenever the filmmaker uses the technique that he’s trying to pull the viewer out of the mindset of a typical boxing movie and back into a more real world difficult story, but sometimes you can’t help but feel like Bleed For This could benefit from the vitality of an occasional, full-fledged boxing montage.
Predictably, even despite some possibly disastrous interference from Vinny’s father, played here by the consistently impressive Ciaran Hinds, Pazienza manages to come back with the help of Rooney to become a world champion once again. Just when things were looking up for the young boxer though, the film’s central car crash takes place and Bleed For This moves from a typical underdog boxing story to a comeback story set within a comeback story.
Younger takes his already quiet approach to filmmaking to the forefront of the film when Vinny undergoes his rehabilitation process, and against the advice of both his family members and doctor, opts against having a spinal fusion. Instead, he has a medical device called a Halo installed in his head, with the hopes that he’ll be able to start boxing again by the end of the required six months, which takes up the bulk of the film’s story and runtime.
Teller brings a quiet and confident intensity to his performance here as Pazienza, which is arguably his most impressive outing since his unexpected turn in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash back in 2014, that continues to prove he’s one of the more charismatic young actors of his generation, when given the opportunity to be anyway.
It’s clear that Teller has some hopes for Oscar gold with his performance as well, and he works to not only bring Paz’s personality to life onscreen, but also to make the boxer’s real life physical and emotional struggle feel authentic and earned. He manages to carry a majority of the film’s focus on his shoulders with applause-worthy ease and grace. It’s the film’s final moment however, filled with melancholy confidence and wisdom, that doesn’t make it difficult to say he’ll probably be in the Best Actor conversation next year.
Right alongside Teller, Aaron Eckhart emerges with one of his best and most transformative performances to date as Kevin Rooney, not only providing the audience with some of the film’s best comedic relief during its more dour periods, but also bringing a real complexity to Rooney’s relationship with Paz onscreen, especially when the film itself sometimes has to cut corners during the development of their relationship. In a film that puts a surprisingly low amount of attention on the actual boxing that’s going on, it’s the scenes between Vinny and Kevin that wind up packing the most punch.
While Younger’s writing and direction is consistently solid throughout the entirety of Bleed For This, the film’s never quite able to bring any tension or real stakes to much of Vinny’s struggle or to any of the film’s key boxing sequences. There’s a real sense that everything is simply going through the motions here, which not only makes one feel its almost two-hour runtime, but also prevents Bleed for This from being anything more than just another solid, if not especially noteworthy American boxing film.
The Verdict
Bleed For This features a pair of engaging turns from its two leads, that help to give it life where it desperately needs it, but the film itself is never quite able to feel as refreshing or courageous as Vinny Pazienza’s real life story.
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