Gloves Off

Rocky meets The Full Monty.

This British comedy drama has some good character actors. Ricky Tomlinson, Paul Barber and Alexei Sayle. It is let down by a banal script that mistakes silliness for comedy.

Doug (Brad Moore) plays a once promising boxer. Now he is managing a boxing gym which has debts that he cannot pay. Some fight club type posh boys are pressurising him especially as one of the old geezers in the boxing club knocked one of them out.

One day Vera (Denise Van Outen) comes to his gym wanting Doug to train his son. When the money pressure gets too much for him, Vera who is a gypsy wants Doug to get her dim brother in shape for a £100,000 bare knuckle fight. This would enable Doug to pay off his debts but the brother has to win the contest and these types of fights get dirty very quickly.

The film has too many broadly sketched caricatures. Posh boys who think they are hard, Irish, gypsies. It feels dated and lazy.

This film was very easy watching, great cast, light hearted and fun.

Enjoyed watching this entertaining movie. Found Bradley Moore to be a very natural actor.

If you enjoy fight films and are tired of people trying to out-glamour each other, this is a good one to try. It's consistently fun, and it's intentionally loaded with classic fight-film stuff which, for those who realize it's intentional and not a cop-out, gets increasingly funnier as each typical bit plays out. It's not trying to reinvent anything or sell itself on a ludicrous amount of pretty faces, and the characters are a lot of fun to watch and I appreciate it hugely for these things. Anybody giving this film less than five stars is trying too hard to be critical.

Big plus, I watched it all the way through knowing how it would end. The cast were great at their roles, the laughs weren't actually that plentiful. It was like boys from the blackstuff meets Snatch. It's nowhere near worth 10 but worth watching.