Les adversaires

‘Play It To The Bone' is really two movies. One is a movie about boxing and the other is a comedic character study of the boxers. As a boxing film it succeeds nicely. As a comedy it has its moments. As a character study it hits the canvas hard.

The storyline was sort of ‘Rocky' times two. Two washed up middleweight boxers Vince and Cesar (Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas), who are also best friends, get a last minute chance to fight in Las Vegas on the undercard of a Mike Tyson heavyweight bout when the two scheduled fighters are unable to fight. They are promised that the winner will get a chance to fight for the championship, but they have to be in Las Vegas tonight. The trouble is, they have to fight each other.

So they climb into a car with Cesar's girlfriend (and Vince's ex-girlfriend) Grace (Lolita Davidovich) and drive from L.A. to Las Vegas. Most of the rest of the movie is about the drive followed by the fight.

Director Ron Shelton has had quite a few sports oriented success stories to his credit (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump and Tin Cup). The best part of the film was the boxing. The boxing was well choreographed and both actors were athletic and fought like real boxers. Shelton was also excellent at creating the feel of a boxing match. Anyone who has ever watched an HBO bout will recognize ring announcers Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and George Foreman. Mike Tyson made a cameo as well as numerous celebrity boxing fans (Kevin Costner, Rod Stewart, Wesley Snipes and a host of others). The makeup for the cuts and puffiness was also very realistic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film was not as good as the fight. Shelton spends a good deal of time developing the characters, but it is all for naught because they have no substance. They are two hapless jocks, obvious mental lightweights, who spend most of the trip to Las Vegas fighting over Grace, cutting up and strutting around like peacocks. Shelton takes great pains to try to make us love these characters equally by making them equally pathetic. But that doesn't work because it leaves the audience without anyone to pull for in the fight. The ending is utterly predictable and the film whimpers off into the sunset with no more than a stagger.

Banderas and Harrelson both gave journeyman performances. They had good chemistry and some decent comedy between them, but there was nothing special here. The best performance by far was by Davidovich who transcended her normal sex kitten role and took command of the entire film with a character that was a flaming bitch on wheels. She was smart, tough sexy and manipulative and dominated every scene. Once again she shows that she is talented as well as attractive, which makes me wonder why she has never gotten more substantial roles.

This is a tough one to rate because it does some things very well and other things poorly. I gave it a 6/10. It had some good comedic moments, but not enough of them. It had some excellent boxing scenes, but a disappointing outcome. And the character study simply failed due to vacant characters. If you like boxing, Harrelson, Banderas or especially Davidovich, you will enjoy this film. Otherwise, enter at your own risk.

The story goes that Ron Shelton wanted to make a biopic of Bob Marley, but the financing fell through, and in a few weeks time, he wrote this boxing film. "That's okay," you think. "This is Ron Shelton. Sure, he co-wrote THE GREAT WHITE HYPE, which was disappointing, but he didn't direct that one. He did write and direct BULL DURHAM, WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP, COBB, and TIN CUP(well, he co-wrote the last one, but let's not split hairs), all great sports movies, so he could probably do a boxing movie in his sleep." Well, unfortunately, that's what he seems to have done in this disappointing movie.

Shelton was reportedly inspired by a true-life fight where the preliminary match also turned out to be much more compelling than the featured attraction, which would seem tailor-made for him. And like the other Shelton heroes, the characters of Vince(Harrelson) and Cesar(Banderas) aren't among the great ones, though they've flirted with greatness. Finally, certainly the idea is right in place, that the point is not who of these best friends wins the fight(without revealing the ending, I will say it's not only logical, but feels right), but the fact they each got this last shot and put on a good show. The problem, until the fight scenes, is the execution.

Shelton usually has a gift for dialogue and character, especially when romantic comedy is concerned, but he seems to have mislaid it here. Vince and Cesar are pretty much ciphers from the beginning, despite the obvious chemistry Harrelson and Banderas have between them. There are traits which are mildly funny(like the fact that a boxer would watch soaps), but nothing that adds up. Even the fact that Vince is a "Jesus" freak seems incoherent rather than part of the character. And the dialogue between them, except in the scenes when they're talking at the same time, seems lame, relying on easy homophobia and vulgarity rather than being funny(compare that to the clever trash talk in WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP). And even when Davidovich enters the picture, though she gamely tries, she's got nothing to work with, and seems oddly mismatched with Banderas. Harrelson at least she seems comfortable with, but they don't have enough scenes together.

The fight scenes are where Shelton finally comes alive. The behind-the-scenes details of how the fight gets into place and such are familiar, but well-handled. And the fight is compelling to us, so it's believable that the rest of the arena would find it so as well. We see the fighters being given advice, but since they think they know each other, they sometimes ignore it to do their own thing. And you really believe at the end they're both fighting on pure adrenaline. Even Davidovich becomes believable here as she realizes she loves both of them, and while she understands they need this, can't bear to watch them hurt each other. Yet even here, Shelton messes up. There are too many T&A shots, which are supposed to reflect how the fighters' minds are fogged up, but are more likely there to get people to hoot. Ultimately, I hope this is a blip on Shelton's career, rather than a sign he's losing it.

All in all, this is an okay film. The plot is very simple, and the characters are fairly interesting. I understand that this movie is supposed to be about second chances, but I couldn't help but think after the movie's very predictable ending, what the hell was the point of the movie? What was the epiphany reached, and what was the point of characters like Lucy Liu being in the story? 90% of the film is spent during the car ride to Vegas, which is good and bad, it gives a personal touch to a movie, yet does get kind of old after a while. I like Woody Harelson's character b\c I can relate to him in a lot of respects. One thing I found unrealistic, no chick would ever ditch Antonio 'de sexy' Banderas, I almost laughed when she 'broke up' with him. Antonio also looked a little weak for a boxer, but the fight scene in the end was not effected by it. The end is actually the best part of the movie, yet it is very predictable. Overall, not a bad friday night movie if you have some time to kill and a few beers to pounce. 6/10

With the Tyson fight coming to Vegas, organisers Hank Goody and Joe Domino have put together quite a few big names on the undercard. However when one of their fighters turns up drugged out with two hookers and his opponent is pronounced dead at the scene of a car accident, they are forced to try and rustle up two fighters with a few hours notice and turns to friends Vince and Cesar. Taking the offer, the friends set off with Cesar's girlfriend to make the trip to Vegas for the fight – a trip that sees them learning more about one another while also trying to prepare to try and knock each other out.

I looked at the cast list for this film and wondered why such a film had managed to come and go in the UK without me even having heard of it. So many well-known actors, a big sports director and loads of star cameos – surely it must be great, well, in a word, no. This is not to say that it is awful because it isn't, it is just that the writing is nowhere near good enough to sustain the film and as a result the film is never engaging on any level. The film has a fight over the final 30 minutes, including set up, but the majority of the film sees us riding in the car with the three main characters. This focus puts a lot of onus onto them as characters and their stories to be interesting and engaging – the dynamics and the history in that car needs to be the edge, to be the hook that kept me interested. It has its interesting stuff but major things like Grace's relationship with the two men but it doesn't do anything with it whatsoever. Even during the fight her split emotions are made very clear but the actual script never bothers to develop it or make it more than very obvious padding. Sadly the majority of the dialogue was just bickering that didn't develop the characters at all and made their stories just fall flat in the telling because we don't really care about them. Bickering, as White Men Can't Jump showed us, can be fun when it is delivered as a source of comedy but here there are no laughs because it doesn't seem to want to be a comedy either. Its target seemed to have been a character sports film with laughs – but it pretty much misses all of those.

This is not to say that the actual fight isn't fun because it is pretty enjoyable if you like that sort of thing. Yes it is all a bit unrealistic but it is pretty exciting at points and only gets silly at key moments. It isn't a great fight but it is at least a relief to get away from the empty bickering of the majority of the film. Sadly it ends on a low point and then drags back into the empty script again for about 10 minutes before just ending without really telling us anything. Physically Harrelson and Banderas both look good – although Woody looks the buffest and is an imposing presence. Sadly he just plays his usual character and, without the material, he is exposed. Banderas tries harder to bring some character out in his role but he is just shadow boxing because the script is not there with him. Davidovich is OK but it is evident that she had no idea why her character feels for both the men or why it is so persistent – nor does she know what to do with it and, although light and fun, she alone cannot add substance. Lucy Liu is annoying and seems only there to fill time, flash flesh and fake an orgasm for the audience. Sizemore is fun but obvious, as is Wagner but both men are very underused. The cameos all roll in at the end of the film but other than saying 'oh look it's' they don't really add anything.

Overall this is a pretty poor film. It could have been better if the writing had developed the characters and made the dialogue relevant and interesting instead of just making it a load of bickering, but it didn't. The fight is enjoyable but mainly because it is a welcome break from the average stuff that has gone before, but fans of boxing will scoff at it even if it is quite fun for the most part. Generally it is a missed opportunity with an average script and no real aspirations; not bad just really weak.

This movie had some great boxing scenes. The hits looked real and the cuts and bruises did too. The only problem with this movie was it was a little over two hours. Instead of flying to Las Vegas, they drove there. This led to over 40 minutes in the car (Nice car though). If the movie was 90 minutes, it would have been much better.

A nice touch was the use of real boxing personality. For the casual fan, people would reconize George Foreman, Mike Tyson and other from HBO. It also had real cutmen and trainers in the corners. The director/writer does his research and the movie does show it.

Still the movie is a 5 out of 10.