UPPERCUT REVIEW

“Ving Rhames’ presence can only do so much to compensate for weak storytelling and filmmaking faux pas”

There’ve been so many great boxing dramas over the century of cinema, far too many to mention, in fact, yet boxing continues to be such a popular sport it makes sense that filmmakers would want to explore this world, even when it comes to smaller indies like the recent Bang Bang, starring Tim Blake Nelson.

Along comes German filmmaker Torsten Ruether, who made a 2021 boxing movie called Lebehaken in his native land, collaborating with actress and producer Luise Großmann (who goes by the moniker “Luiii”). The movie barely got much attention during its negligible festival run, but it clearly was a passion project for the duo to want to remake the same film, only this time in English. The original film must have been something – I’ve never seen it – because Ruether even convinced Ving Rhames of Pulp Fiction and the Mission: Impossible fame to come on board in a key role.

We meet Großmann’s character Toni, as she is working with a boxer named Payne Harris (Jordan E. Cooper) before his big match. That relationship is never clarified, because the film immediately flashes back eight years in time to show Toni going out to Brooklyn to visit the gym of legendary boxer, Elliot Duffond, played by Rhames. She convinces Elliot to let her stick around in order to clean the place, but she has grand dreams of being a great boxer herself.

Many questions that come to mind when thinking about the story being told in Uppercut, firstly the fact that a Brooklyn gym would be empty of any other trainees whenever Elliot and Toni are interacting, though that just might be par for the course of the film’s low-budget production values. It’s a shame since this story has the potential of being something as strong as Girlfight or Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby, but anything good about the movie is counterbalanced by serious issues.

I’ve never had a chance to see Luiii’s performance in the original German film, but often, she’s the weak link in this English remake, her heavy accent often getting in the way of her being able to pull off an effective dramatic performance. I only learned later that she was also the film’s producer and clearly committed enough to tell this story three different ways. Oftentimes, when actors are involved with producing their own material, they’re unable to see that maybe another actor would do a better job, and that’s definitely the case here. This is the most obvious when Toni eventually reveals to Elliot why he once spotted her doing community service, something she was forced to do after beating up another young woman after a soccer match where her team lost.

There’s little question that Luiii’s scenes with Rhames are the film’s strongest moments, but the filmmaker is constantly cutting to the present-day and a boxing match that’s never properly set up to relay its significance. It’s never explained why we’re watching a glammed-up future Toni or this boxing match. These scenes are just thrown into the mix, and that might be this remake’s biggest problem. It’s almost as if the amount of time the filmmakers spent on previous iterations made them overlook providing the necessary information for new viewers to understand what is happening. It’s an hour into the movie before we learn about Toni’s toxic boyfriend – explained through another long monologue sequence– and later on, that she has a daughter, two things that should have been introduced earlier during the film’s set-up.

To be fair, Luiii’s character does grow on you, but more through her relationship with Elliot than anything happening in the present-day scenes, which just don’t work nearly as well, since it’s hard to believe that Toni has become a successful boxing promoter in such a short time. There’s also an older blonde woman, played by Joanna Cassidy (Zhora from Blade Runner!), in Payne’s corner, though we know nothing about her until a long scene with Luiii late in the movie, which doesn’t serve much purpose for the overall story.

With a better editor and far less cutting between the two timelines, Uppercut might have worked better and had far more potential to be a strong indie boxing drama, mainly due to Rhames’ presence. Even so, that can only do so much to compensate for weak storytelling and filmmaking faux pas that ultimately ruin the experience.

Rating: 5/10

Uppercut will be available digitally via Prime Video starting November 1.