Bleed for This (2016) Review!!!

Synopsis – The inspirational story of World Champion Boxer Vinny Pazienza who, after a near fatal car crash, which left him not knowing if he’d ever walk again, made one of sports most incredible comebacks.

My Take – Their has to be some guy in Hollywood who has declared that there has to be at least one boxing every year, as long as there is a ring, a cheering crowd, and a story of overcoming long odds: injury, a tough upbringing, a looming legacy, etc. I get it, when it comes to boxing, there is no other sport that has delivered such powerful and emotional dramas on the big screen. It’s the personal drama they delve into that makes them so relatable to audiences. Despite the range of impressive films, the genre has endured over time, namely because those filmmakers remembered the most important rule of the match: A boxing film is only as great as its story outside the ring. Last year, we had the brilliant Rocky sequel/reboot Creed and the remarkably good Southpaw. This year we already had the watchable Hands of Stone, a film about Roberto Duran, who interestingly has an important role in the climax of this Ben Younger directed film. Yet another one based on a true story, the film is based on the astonishingly courageous real life experiences of Vinny Pazienza, who just over a year after an accident in 1991, re entered the ring & continued an unbelievable stage of a career that finally ended in 2004 after 50 wins in the ring. However, this is one of those biopics that, despite laying all the right amount to ground work and of course being essentially true, seems too cliché to be anything but a Hollywood story. This film has a lot going for it. It’s got a great cast of character actors, a true story of a prized fighter and some downright great drama. Despite all of this, the film suffers from a problem that no amount of editing or rewriting could fix, a predictable route. There are the manufactured triumphant moments, programmed humor and chuckles, and the shocking event. At no time are you transported into caring, as the great cast are forced into shallow stereotypes with no depth or dimension.

The story follows professional Italian boxer Vinny Pazienza (Miles Teller) began his career as a fighter with a bout in 1983. He won his first title in 1987 when he defeated Greg Haugen to become the world lightweight champion. But after losing three fights in a row, his exasperated manager Lou Duva (Ted Levine) believes Vinny has gone as far as he can go. The kid has heart and can take a beating, but doesn’t have the skill to be a champion. With the support of his brash & dominant father Angelo (Ciaran Hinds), Vinny starts training with Kevin Rooney (Aaron Eckhart), the trainer who started Mike Tyson’s career. Rooney, an alcoholic, convinces Vinny to stop dropping weight. Bulk up, fight in a higher weight class and Vinny embraces this new philosophy with vigor. However, after winning his fight with Gilbert Dele for the junior middleweight championship in 1991, Vinny ends up in near fatal car crash that broke his neck and left doctors doubting if Vinny would ever even walk again. With a screwed in halo brace holding his neck in place, Pazienza is confined to a hospital bed for three months and requested to take a cooling period of about six months. Against doctors’ orders and without them aware, Vinny snuck into his basement at home, to slowly work out, with the help of Rooney to regain his strength for a fight he knew he’d someday get. Of course, the comeback was as improbable as it was inspirational, and the decision to go with the Halo (metal brace that screws into the skull) over the neck fusion surgery could easily be categorized as foolish rather than courageous. Much of the film’s opening half-hour is devoted to meticulously detailing Pazienza’s macho side, an emphasis on character that throws a marginally subversive light onto the sports-film conventions that the film fully embraces. But much of the story revolves around the internal make-up and competitive drive that made Vinny the man and the boxer that we see. This proud, driven, egotistical local from Providence held world titles at three different weight classes, refusing to be limited by the opinions of others. Rather than end with a classically Hollywood shot of victorious Paz celebrating in the ring, the film ends with an odd interview centered on his debate against the phrase “it’s not that easy”. It’s a stance that makes us question whether he ever learned the lessons of gamble vs risk. Most of those are tense, taut crowd-pleasers, which the film clearly intended to be as well, with an interesting and true story at its center. It has all the hallmarks: the working-class family, the tough background, the gruff coach, the charismatic young fighter, and a seemingly unsurmountable hill for our underdog to climb. It’s an undeniably a remarkable story, and one that feels custom-made for Hollywood. But director Younger never takes full advantage of it, taking us instead on an all-too-familiar ride. The film tells what many consider the greatest real-life boxing comebacks in history, but on-screen it never feels like anything but a run-of-the-mill fight picture.

We get our training montages, set to strains of AC/DC, among others; we get our moments of despair; we get our gritted teeth and raised fists; and we get our inevitable third-act finale. (One formula element curiously absent: a serious romantic interest.) Seriously, montages of a guy slowly and painfully doing crunches and bench presses just doesn’t make for great cinema, especially when you know he’s going to make it eventually. Along the way, the film rarely, if ever, surprises. Director Ben Younger, working from a script he wrote, never feints, never dodges, never does anything unexpected. Consequently, his film never delivers anything resembling a knockout blow. Vinny is an undisciplined playboy before his accident; afterward, he has to relearn how to live. The process he undertakes to train his body to work again is grueling and immensely painful — and we are granted many scenes that show just how painful, to the point where it starts to feel like self-flagellating torture. Also, the mood and pacing of the music selection didn’t match the scenes they scored. There were times that actual footage of the real Vinny were used making it obvious that actor Miles Teller wasn’t Vinny. Plus, The boxing stuff here isn’t really special, the fight scenes are okay but after Creed they just seem anti-climactic—and there’s little about the family dynamics we haven’t already seen, but the cast is pretty terrific and manages to elevate the material and make it seem stronger than it is. Ted Levine is marvelous as the sleazy and flinty-eyed promoter Dan Duva, a guy with suspect loyalty to the kid fighter until the comeback story finally secures the big paycheck, Ciaran Hinds does his best Albert Finney impression as Paz’s father, and Katey Sagal is terrific as Paz’s mother. But the stand-out performances belong to Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart as Kevin Rooney, Paz’s trainer. Teller, putting his unconventional looks and undeniable charisma to work in transforming himself into former prizefighter Vinny Pazienza. Once more, he impresses. We’ve previously seen Teller showcase his versatility by convincingly play a gifted jazz drummer (Whiplash), a teen alcoholic (The Spectacular Now) and a villainous post-apocalyptic teen (The Divergent Series), an arms dealer (the vastly underrated War Dogs), among other roles. Here, he adds a whole new shade, capably capturing Pazienza’s cocky, motor mouthed Jersey Shore-flavored charisma. He will definitely be in the mix come Oscar time. As for Eckhart, who plays his down-on-his-luck trainer Kevin Rooney, there’s a certain pathos to his role that stems from the simple fact that he’s really the only salient figurehead for a good two-thirds of the film. You can see Eckhart rise above the material and, along with his turn in this year’s Sully, it’s nice to have him back in better roles unlike I, Frankenstein. On the whole, ‘Bleed for This’ feels like just another boxing film which has its entertaining moments & a strong lead performance, but is just tiresomely predictable.