The Weinstein Company
I’ve seen quite a few boxing movies over the years, and quite a few “true life” ones. Ali comes to mind as a disappointing one and Creed as one I thought was pretty good. But the anti-hero angle seems common, like with the more recent Southpaw which I didn’t think was all that amazing. Complicated heroes, that seems to be the idea, but where do you draw the line between anti-hero and villain? When you’re dealing with real world people, the lines get a bit harder to see.
Hands of Stone comes from director Jonathan Jakubowicz about the life of famed boxer Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramirez). The movie starts with Roberto’s difficult childhood in Panama, surrounded by the drama and problems associated with the Panama Canal and America’s control over it. Even as a kid, he has a bit of chip on his shoulder about the USA especially because his father (an American) left his mother before he was born. But he learns to channel his aggression into boxing, discovering a shocking talent for it.
Trained by local trainer ‘Plomo,’ Roberto gets better and better, eventually getting approached by local boxing promoter Carlos Eleta (Rubén Blades) to get into world lightweight ranking. The movie jumps fast into when Roberto begins getting closer to that championship, getting help from legendary trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro). He’s also slowly falling in love/hitting on the girl who he’ll marry, Felicidad (Ana de Armas).
That part’s a little odd, as she’s initially portrayed as a schoolgirl that a 30-something man is hitting on (Edgar Ramirez is 39, Ana de Armas is 28, so not so bad although in real life Roberto is only three years older than his wife) and then getting into some relatively graphic sex scenes. Actually it’s odd later with another sex scene, but I’ll get to that. To me, it was like the director felt the movie needed some “realism” and threw in the sex scene but didn’t know how to handle it. It was weird, jumpy, and not at all sexy or intimate.
Soon enough, Roberto must face off against the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard (a pretty decent Usher Raymond, the singer). The two are very different sorts of fighters, so their interactions are interesting enough. Roberto makes many mistakes, both in the ring and many more in his personal life. He seems often a real jerk, yet occasionally will have moments of growth, emotional depth, and sorrow. The movie doesn’t deal very effectively with that, although I like Edgar Ramirez’s take on it.
The boxing itself is fine, not that well shot comparatively, but brutal enough to be engaging. Robert De Niro is actually pretty good here, not at all phoning it in (unlike that terrible boxing movie he did with Stallone). His conflict with his ties to the mob-controlled boxing industry comes up a few times in intriguing ways, although it’s more a secondary storyline. The tertiary storyline is about Sugar Ray Leonard, which fine, I guess, although did we also need a shoehorned in sex scene with him and his girlfriend?
Sex isn’t necessarily something to make a movie more mature, especially if done this poorly.
That said, the acting was pretty good here — I actually even thought Usher was as Sugar Ray, although he’s not as charismatic as the real deal. I was particularly happy to see a small part with Reg E. Cathy as Don King, because I’ve loved that guy since I saw him in Square One. Put him in more movies I say.
Roberto’s story is interesting in general, and some of his particular controversial fights are also interesting, but the movie doesn’t really pace itself well enough to explain them. His motivations aren’t so clear much of the time, and the movie can’t get a handle on how sympathetic Roberto is meant to be. I’m all for complexity but this is more muddled.
In general, the movie is very average, but it really does suffer when it compares to such things as Creed which was much better. I didn’t know much about Roberto before this, but at the very least I was inspired to learn more about his unusual rise to fame. It turns out his real life story is interesting, but perhaps it wasn’t able to be told effectively in a little under two hours.
Hands of Stone has a run time of 1 hour 51 minutes, and is rated R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity.
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