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Humphrey Bogart is one of Hollywood's most legendary icons. From the world-weary Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1943) to the cold-hearted Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Bogart brought an uncanny mix of sad-eyed cynicism and moral fortitude to each role he played. Those same qualities are on display in his final film, The Harder They Fall (1956), a gritty noir about corruption in the sport of boxing. Cinematographer Burnett Guffey earned an Oscar nomination for his raw, unflinching look at the brutality of boxing. His dynamic camera angles and suffocating closeups of the in-ring action clearly influenced the intense fight scenes in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980). Boxing fans will also love seeing former heavyweight champions Jersey Joe Walcott and Max Baer in supporting roles. However, even with the dazzling camera work and notable cameos, the film's true marquee attraction is Bogart delivering another classic performance in the face of tragic personal circumstances.

Netflix has made a deal with Mark Wahlberg, Peter Berg and the Robert B. Parker estate to bring back for a potential series of feature films Spenser, the poetry-spouting wisecracking former boxer-turned Boston-based private eye made famous in 40 novels by Parker, and in three seasons of the ‘80s TV series that starred Robert Urich.

The first film will be an adaptation of Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, one of the eight Spenser mystery novels written by Ace Atkins, who took over the series after Parker died in 2010. The movie will differ from the novel, in that it begins with Spenser emerging from a prison stretch, stripped of his private investigator license. Here, he gets pulled back into the underbelly of the Boston crime world when he uncovers the truth about a sensational murder and the twisted conspiracy behind it.

Neal Moritz will produce through his Original Film banner, along with Wahlberg,...

Humphrey Bogart movies: ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ ‘High Sierra’ (Image: Most famous Humphrey Bogart quote: ‘The stuff that dreams are made of’ from ‘The Maltese Falcon’) (See previous post: “Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall Movies.”) Besides 1948, 1941 was another great year for Humphrey Bogart — one also featuring a movie with the word “Sierra” in the title. Indeed, that was when Bogart became a major star thanks to Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra and John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. In the former, Bogart plays an ex-con who falls in love with top-billed Ida Lupino — though both are outacted by ingénue-with-a-heart-of-tin Joan Leslie. In the latter, Bogart plays Dashiel Hammett’s private detective Sam Spade, trying to discover the fate of the titular object; along the way, he is outacted by just about every other cast member, from Mary Astor’s is-she-for-real dame-in-distress to Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominee Sydney Greenstreet. John Huston...

There have been many great boxing movies over the years, but most of them are about white champs – and there aren't many of those in the real world

The ratio of good films about boxers to bad films about boxers is extraordinarily high. That may be because there is something inherently thrilling about the manly art, but it may also be because Hollywood doesn't make a movie about boxers every week, whereas it does make a movie about young men who treat women badly 52 times a year. It may also be because the great movies about boxers become lodged in the public's memory, while the bad ones (The Main Event, a woeful 1979 outing starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal immediately comes to mind) simply vapourise. It may also be because so many movies about boxers have been directed by talented directors (Martin Scorsese, John Huston, Michael Mann, Martin Ritt, Jim Sheridan,...

Sports writers of a certain age like to bring up the fact that for a long time in America, only three sports mattered: Baseball, horse racing and boxing. Baseball remains a major part of American culture (though it now takes a back seat to football in national popularity and vigor) and horse racing has been regulated to a mostly regional phenomenon (with extra vague interest carved in for the Triple Crown). Boxing has been hit the hardest, undone in recent decades by crooked promoters, uneven fights, too many belts and the rise of mixed martial arts. To many, though, boxing remains the sweet science, the simplest and most direct of all sports, capable of being simultaneously poetic and brutal. So on this day in 1956, it was big news that Rocky Marciano announced he would retire from boxing at age 31, finishing his career as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.

“Boxing,” Eddie Muller affirmed, “is noir.” In the early 1930s between the demise of Jack Dempsey as heavyweight champion of the world and the ascension of Joe Louis as heavyweight champion of the world, a couple of enterprising gangsters on the East Coast—Paul John (“Frankie”) Carbo and Frank (“Blinky”) Palermo (“I’m not making these names up,” Muller assured us)—attempted to take control of all the boxing rings by basically determining who would and would not fight for the championship fights that were being held in the greater New York area. Their great contribution to boxing was the creation of heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, a circus strongman that Carbo and Palermo had their hooks into who they basically led by a leash to the heavyweight championship of the world. Mark Robson’s The Harder They Fall is the fictionalized account of the Primo Carnera scandal.

In keeping with...