Orlando Bloom plays an unnamed once successful Irish boxer who froze in his last fight. He is persuaded to come out of retirement for a comeback fight in Las Vegas. He travels with his wife and coach Caitlin (Catriona Balfe) but when he cannot shift the pounds needed to make the weight, he turns to the brutal and deranged training regime of Boz (John Turturro).
Credit is due to writers Justin Bull and Mark Lane for providing a new twist on the overcrowded field of boxing movies. Apart from a minute or so of his losing bout at the very start, there is no boxing action at all. We see some training but mostly the drama focuses on the fighter’s attempts to lose weight. That gives a problem for director Sean Ellis: how to make that compelling. He tries a few trick shots with his camera but they are ill advised, and he is not really up to the task. For example, the four or five shots of the boxer making himself sick down a toilet were four or five too many!
What the film has in its favour are a trio of good performances. Bloom is clearly fully committed to his role and Turturro is magnetic as the borderline insane trainer. Balfe brings the heart to the story and is terrific, even if it is hard to believe that she would have acquiesced to Boz’s methods so readily.
The biggest problem, though, is the last 20 minutes or so where the story becomes ludicrous. Boz kills another fighter without anyone noticing and the method the boxer uses to finally make the weight – and the reaction to it – is ridiculous. What feels like a tacked on happy ending makes little sense, based on what we have seen before.
Rating: 5 out of 10