My review was written in September 1990 after watching the movie on Quest Entertainment video cassette.
"Brutal Glory", initially titled "Kid McCoy", is an ambitious but phony South African biopic of a prizefighter from the 'teens and '20s.
The 1987 production, released direct-to-video in a 94-minute version Stateside, opens on a New York setting of 1918 where Timothy Brantley as Kid McCoy is a tough streetfighter living in a tenement with a brutalizing father and kindly mother. Promoter Robert Vaughn, replete with an unsteady Irish accent, builds him up and gets him hired by champ James Ryan (the South African martial arts star) for his boxing stable.
The title fight against Ryan is well-staged, but Kid is soon blacklisted for his unwillingness to throw fights. His solution is to travel to Africa where he contests for the middleweight title. In Africa one is allowed to bet during the fight so Kid unscrupulously pretends to be losing to push up the odds. I Grobler's screenplay maintains he's basically a nice guy, even treating ex-champ Simon Poland with respect after beating hi brains out in the ring.
Final reels go off the deep end, including a scenic safari sequence, a race across the Namib desert against Gor the Bushman and extremely hokey melodrama involving the death of Kid's girl (Leah King Pinsent). Climax has Kid fighting a much bigger opponent for the heavyweight crown.
Koos Roets' workmanlike direction follows the Hollywood model but results in an antiquated form of filmmaking.
