Gladiator (Boxing Movie)
A film and story that clearly inspired the MMA and UFC phenomenon of later years, director Rowdy (Roadhouse) Herrington makes the best use of a low budget here to tell the story of Tommy Riley (James Marshall), who moves with his dad (John Heard) to the slums of Chicago and starts to attend the all-black high school there. It’s not long before racism rears its ugly head as he is soon targeted for no other reason than his skin color. However, after whipping some ass in a street fight, the kid (who it turns out, was a Golden Gloves fighter) is recruited by a shady businessman (Robert Loggia) to fight on an illegal underground boxing circuit, an offer which he accepts in order to pay off his father’s gambling debts. The film suffers at times from the lead performance of Marshall, who offers charisma and presence but little in the way of acting chops, underplaying to the point of distraction and mumbling much of his dialogue James Dean-style. It’s obvious that he could have been something if he had learned to act, but after his 1992 heyday (which included roles in Twin Peaks and A Few Good Men), he quickly faded into obscurity. He does do fine though, in the action-packed fighting scenes, in which the bouts take place (with the most incompetent referees imaginable) in an old warehouse witnessed by gamblers and criminals: This is the world of Horn (Brian Dennehy), the evil promoter who was once a top contender himself, but found himself screwed over so bad in his own pro career that he has decided to redeem himself by creating and overseeing an abomination of the sport he once loved, where low blows, elbows, illegal substances, kicks to the head, and even back suplexes go unnoticed by the idiot refs. This over the top element at times works against and at other times in favor of the story, such as the Hispanic fighter (Homicide’s Jon Seda) whom Marshall befriends who is just so damn jovial that one knows it’s only a matter of time before he gets his brains beat out. However, Dennehy is mesmerizing as the villain, not giving a shit about the (permanent) damage his fighters inflict on each other and obviously fixated on using Marshall as his meal ticket to bigger and better things since he sees him as obviously a younger version of himself; Loggia as his yes man makes a likable dirtbag, scummy and shameless in many ways yet bringing a subtle sympathetic side to his role at times; The cast also includes Cuba Gooding Jr. (billed as the star of the film, which he’s not) as the top black boxer on the circuit who also befriends Marshall but when forced to fight him for a big payday sees the both of them torn up inside; Ossie Davis doing solid work as Marshall’s trainer who’s just doing his best to keep his kids from getting killed out there; and Cara Buono in the often distracting part of Marshall’s love interest, an element that at times seems out of whack with the other ultra-macho dynamics of the film, as she basically just turns up whenever the plot requires her. The script does a good job of keeping the film entertaining, and the finale, with Marshall taking on Dennehy himself in the ring to win his freedom, reeks of poetic justice in the oftentimes scummy real-life world of fighting that we never see happen to Don King (or Dana White), even if it comes off as a bit simplistic. Overall, an entertaining, engaging effort that might not be another Rocky, but is still not bad…
7/10