The Fighter

Conte plays Felipe Rivera, a Mexican who joins up with a revolutionary group trying to wrest the country from its current leadership. His motivation is unclear to begin with but a long flashback takes care of that. Rivera's chief means of assisting the cause is boxing to raise cash for it. The film is flawed, there's no getting away from that. It has plenty of very wooden, stereotypical acting and the script is pretty crude. But there is some outstanding camera-work here (James Wong Howe was cinematographer, along with an uncredited Floyd Crosby, who shot High Noon and worked on From Here to Eternity), especially the boxing scenes but there are great moments throughout, and Conte's performance is another highlight. His role is ultimately more three dimensional than is often the case (in my experience - seen 9 of his films) and his fight scenes are great. Conte fans will almost certainly enjoy the film. Cobb's performance (as the leader of the revolutionaries) will divide viewers, but I enjoyed it - enthusiasm over realism. All in all, good fun. It's public domain and you can watch it online on The Internet Archive.

At the time this film was released in 1952 I was a sophomore intercollegiate boxer (135 lbs, 6'2"). I saw the film twice in 1952. I had seen other boxing films but none as realistic as boxing by Richard Conte. He was an incredibly talented and under rated actor. In you love boxing see this film! Conte looks like and moves like a boxer. Considering Conte was 42 years old at the time this film was made he appears in remarkable physical condition. Not only is the boxing itself "real" but the ostensible purpose of the boxing matches make sense. Conte's people need guns and he boxes to get money for those guns. It is difficult to remember scenes of a film I saw 56 years ago. I do remember that Conte during the course of boxing matches appeared to be exhausted just would a real boxer after a match. Of course the weight class I boxed, and especially intercollegiate boxing, is never designed to injure/harm anyone. Real boxing is designed to injure/damage the opponent.

All long this excellent little social drama, I thought of John Garfield in the main lead character. But don't misundertand me, Richard Conte is excellent though, I would say as powerful, impressive, I mean for this film. Not for the whole Garfield career; Garfield was greater than Conte. That said, I did not know this director Herbert Kline, whose career was really short. This explains that. The movie is unfortunately too much predictable. That's not my all time favourite in terms of social drama, I guess that one or two decades before, starring Henry Fonda or Richard Barthelmess, it would have been better. With also a William Wellman behind the camera. It would have been a topic for him.

This isn't so much a boxing movie as a peasant rebelling against a cruel dictatorship movie. Richard Conte (who, at 42, was about 15 years too old for the role of Felipe Rivera) plays the peasant in question who flees to New Mexico to raise funds for the rebellion after his beloved is murdered by troops. The film is a clumsy amalgamation of two stories - Rivera's life as a peasant, and his attempts to raise money to buy guns for the rebellion through boxing - the former of which is sandwiched between the latter as an extended flashback. As always in this type of film all the peasants are decent noble types and all the troops are leering sadists.

Lee J. Cobb plays Durango, the heroic rebel leader and he isn't that great. He was called upon a few times in his career to portray latino types and, with his tendency to exaggerate the accents he was never convincing. In fact the film is fairly ordinary throughout and directed in a workmanlike manner by Herbert Kline (who also wrote), although the fight sequences are fairly good for the time. This is one for Conte completists only.

Richard Conte does a fine job playing a young Mexican prizefighter in the early years of the last century. It's a trade he took to in an effort to raise money for the cause of overthrowing Porfirio Diaz.

I have to confess I was a bit shocked learning that this film comes from a Jack London novel based on a real character, at least according to the narration. Fine writer that he was London had some truly racist views on Asians. Apparently that did not hold true for Hispanics.

The plot has Conte falling under the influence of revolutionary Lee J. Cobb after his village is destroyed in a barbaric act perpetrated by one of Diaz's generals Rodolfo Hoyos. Conte flees to El Paso and hooks up with the exiled supporters of Francisco Madero.

Where in order first to just have three hots and a cot he takes up prizefighting and gets quite a local reputation as an up and coming club fighter. Let's say Conte out of necessity finds a way to combine his newly acquired pugilistic skills with his revolutionary politics. His fight scene at the climax of The Fighter is one of the most brutal ever filmed.

London liked telling tales of the brutal realistic underbelly of society and in The Fighter he also mixes his politics in with his skill as a writer. This is a really good adaption of one of his stories. Fans of London, Conte, and Lee J. Cobb will like it and others will become fans.