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Movie review: De Niro and Stallone score comedy KO in ‘Grudge Match’
Ah, the sweet science. Pugilism is nominally a young man’s sport: toughness kind of runs out by your 40s, and by the time you hit your 50s, your nerves have taken so much beating a flick of the wrist might qualify as a KO.
On paper, this thing had big potential for suck, merely a nostalgia piece for De Niro and Stallone fans who remember them fondly from their “Raging Bull” and “Rocky” days. Let me dissuade you of that. This isn’t just a great boxing movie, this is an awesome dramedy with relentless comedic punching volume.
In fact, despite the plot clichés, this movie is better crafted than it has any right to be. It's like watching Statler and Waldorf, those two grumpy old men from “The Muppets”, put on boxing gloves and duke it out, except Stallone and De Niro are in great shape for a pair of over-the-hill guys.
In “Grudge Match,” Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone play Billy “The Kid” McDonnen and Henry “Razor” Sharp, local Pittsburgh fighters whose fierce rivalry skyrocketed them to fame in their prime.
Before they stopped they were each one and one against the other for the light heavyweight championship belt. In 1983, though, when their decisive third match was about to begin, Razor suddenly announced his retirement, refusing to explain why. Boom. Game over, man. Both their careers were done.
Fast forward 30 years later, when both are in their twilight years with vastly different financial capabilities. Razor barely scrapes by as a skilled factory worker, while Kid is an entrepreneur with his own car dealership. The only difference is Kid still hasn’t let go of his obsession over the fight-that-never-was, while Razor to all appearances seems content with what little he has.
Enter boxing promoter Dante Slate, Jr. (Kevin Hart), who makes them a decent offer for a videogame gig—a bit of motion capture and some voice recording equals some quick money.
Some hijinks ensue at the studio however, where they’re caught brawling in their green suits (complete with lighted reference balls) on camphone video. Because two old guys fighting (also the name of the vid on Youtube) awkwardly is just so hilarious, the inevitable viral backlash gets high enough for an offer neither can refuse: to re-enter the ring and settle the score once and for all.
Veteran stars Stallone, Arkin and De Niro get ready for the match.
The match title? Grudgement Day. I kid you not. Likely the worst event promo head in the history of fight cards. . .and way funnier because of it.
Can these aging almost seniors survive the training? Or will their nearly-geriatric bodies give up before they can fight again? And aren’t five raw eggs hell on a senior citizen’s cholesterol levels?
Both actors play to their strengths and move this thing forward, reprising a vein of their chemistry from their co-starrer “Cop Land.”
De Niro adopts a more mischievous and irritating version of his “Meet the Parents” character and parlays that into Irish fireplug McDonnen. Thirty years of pent-up beef about a match that he never got still weighs on him, enough so that it suffuses and sours his on-the-side stand-up comedy act.
Meanwhile, Stallone makes the great choice of playing the straight guy; “Razor” Sharp is surly, temperamental, and his emotions are a volatile powder keg, packaged tighter than a WW2 MRE ration. He’s been down in the dumps working at a local a manufacturing plant, living in a rundown part of town, and taking care of his old trainor and mentor, Lightning Conlon (Alan Arkin), at a nursing home. He’s a real working-class hero to his factory friends yet he clams up about his boxing days in an instant or passes it off as a joke.
Sure, Stallone and De Niro are great actors (well, okay, maybe the latter more than the former) but it’s really the great supporting cast that rounds this one up and provides the two boxers with the fuel they need leading up to the fight. Arkin in grumpy old man x 100 mode (watch out for the pigs in the freezer allusion), Kim Basinger’s Sally Rose (as the girl who complicated both Kid and Razor’s lives), and her son BJ (Jon Bernthal from “The Walking Dead”) provide emotional ballast and narrative depth that make this more than a sports movie.
Can these aging almost seniors survive the training? Or will their nearly-geriatric bodies give up before they can fight again? And aren’t five raw eggs hell on a senior citizen’s cholesterol levels?
Both actors play to their strengths and move this thing forward, reprising a vein of their chemistry from their co-starrer “Cop Land.”
De Niro adopts a more mischievous and irritating version of his “Meet the Parents” character and parlays that into Irish fireplug McDonnen. Thirty years of pent-up beef about a match that he never got still weighs on him, enough so that it suffuses and sours his on-the-side stand-up comedy act.
Meanwhile, Stallone makes the great choice of playing the straight guy; “Razor” Sharp is surly, temperamental, and his emotions are a volatile powder keg, packaged tighter than a WW2 MRE ration. He’s been down in the dumps working at a local a manufacturing plant, living in a rundown part of town, and taking care of his old trainor and mentor, Lightning Conlon (Alan Arkin), at a nursing home. He’s a real working-class hero to his factory friends yet he clams up about his boxing days in an instant or passes it off as a joke.
Sure, Stallone and De Niro are great actors (well, okay, maybe the latter more than the former) but it’s really the great supporting cast that rounds this one up and provides the two boxers with the fuel they need leading up to the fight. Arkin in grumpy old man x 100 mode (watch out for the pigs in the freezer allusion), Kim Basinger’s Sally Rose (as the girl who complicated both Kid and Razor’s lives), and her son BJ (Jon Bernthal from “The Walking Dead”) provide emotional ballast and narrative depth that make this more than a sports movie.
Past-their-prime pugilists McDonnen (De Niro) and Sharp (Stallone) trade punches.
Really, though, it is Hart who delivers the larger-than-life jokes like uppercuts. He’s aware of what colors he brings to the comedic palette and nearly steals the show. He reins it in when it threatens to overflow, though. His outraged and almost always over-the-top reactions to everything infuse otherwise neutral scenes with modern cues and a cross between Chris Rock and an Ice Cube gangsta wannabe.
The comedy comes first in this sporting drama. Granted, setting up a narrative based on a sporting grudge between aging boxers must perforce have its sad moments, so there’s little effort there, but kudos to screenwriters Tim Kelleher and Rodney Rothman for treating those gnarly plot points with a sympathetic, compassionate eye.
For example, Kid leaves a young boy alone in the company of bar patrons when he goes to romance a twentysomething in his SUV. As can be expected the boy gets into trouble, almost crashing a car into traffic because of Kid’s neglect. See, I never felt that the script was treating it other than the screw up it was, and yet there’s no sense that it was playing it for laughs either – that it was a set-up for some tasteless punch line about Viagra.
Sure there are clichés you can see coming from a mile away, but in a movie as saturated in boxing references like this they feel more like commentary or homage rather than badly glossed over script cuts.
There’s a ton of nice bit part spots here, including LL Cool J and a few famous champs in the epilogue. For my money, one of the best moments is when UFC middleweight and famous trash mouth Chael Sonnen got in Razor’s face. That and what he got right after for just being Chael.
There’s no need to be a boxing fan or even a sports fan at all to enjoy this, though you might miss some of the inside jokes about boxing movies of yore and a few historic matches.
“Grudge Match” stands on its own two feet and jabs you continually before digging in with hooks and letting you KO yourself with laughs. — BM, GMA News
“Grudge Match” is now screening in Metro Manila theaters.
Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
The comedy comes first in this sporting drama. Granted, setting up a narrative based on a sporting grudge between aging boxers must perforce have its sad moments, so there’s little effort there, but kudos to screenwriters Tim Kelleher and Rodney Rothman for treating those gnarly plot points with a sympathetic, compassionate eye.
For example, Kid leaves a young boy alone in the company of bar patrons when he goes to romance a twentysomething in his SUV. As can be expected the boy gets into trouble, almost crashing a car into traffic because of Kid’s neglect. See, I never felt that the script was treating it other than the screw up it was, and yet there’s no sense that it was playing it for laughs either – that it was a set-up for some tasteless punch line about Viagra.
Sure there are clichés you can see coming from a mile away, but in a movie as saturated in boxing references like this they feel more like commentary or homage rather than badly glossed over script cuts.
There’s a ton of nice bit part spots here, including LL Cool J and a few famous champs in the epilogue. For my money, one of the best moments is when UFC middleweight and famous trash mouth Chael Sonnen got in Razor’s face. That and what he got right after for just being Chael.
There’s no need to be a boxing fan or even a sports fan at all to enjoy this, though you might miss some of the inside jokes about boxing movies of yore and a few historic matches.
“Grudge Match” stands on its own two feet and jabs you continually before digging in with hooks and letting you KO yourself with laughs. — BM, GMA News
“Grudge Match” is now screening in Metro Manila theaters.
Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
