Written by James M. Tate / 12/28/2013 / No comments / 2013 , alan arkin , boxing , comedy , jon bernthal , robert deniro , sylvester stallone , team-up
STALLONE VS DE NIRO IN GRUDGE MATCH
year: 2013 rating: **1/2 |
Sylvester Stallone as Henry “Razor” Sharp and Robert De Niro as Billy “The Kid” McDonnen are two retired boxers who had three… no, actually two matches in the past… Kid won the first, Razor the second and then, for mysterious reasons, Razor canceled the anticipated final bow at the last minute, making Kid hold a grudge till a new opportunity arises, many years later (too many years to really matter)...
First let’s get some ROCKY references out of the way: Razor is forced into drinking raw eggs by his elderly manager Lighting, played by Alan Arkin, a "Mickey" (Burgess Meredith) type character… Also like the original Oscar-winning classic, Razor punches hanging beef in a meat locker… Then, like ROCKY II, he's fired from a menial job, buys new clothes, drives around in a hotrod and fumbles lines off “dummy cards” during a commercial shoot… In the backstory, after the success as a fighter, he loses his money and returns to hometown poverty like ROCKY 5… He trains in a grueling, hands-on fashion like ROCKY 4 (physically pulling a truck named Road Hawk care-of OVER THE TOP).... Then takes part in a virtual reality "What if" bout lifted from ROCKY BALBOA...
And at one point later on, during the promotional circuit, he and Kid wind up at an Ultimate Fighting venue where Razor, comparing the popular sport to scripted Professional Wrestling, is threatened by a melodramatic blowhard brawler: reminiscent of Hulk Hogan in ROCKY 3… As for De Niro’s Kid character, he retired from boxing with a lucrative car lot but also runs a nightclub where he, like RAGING BULL himself, performs a laconic stand-up routine...
Stallone pounds meat in ROCKY |
Their scenes fare better than the contrived dialogue between Stallone and Arkin. Perhaps more tragic than De Niro and Stallone playing down to light comedy is that Arkin, no stranger to evoking genuine audience laughter, isn’t funny at all. But he's not the comic relief...
In that department is Kevin Hart as the motormouth promoter keeping a reluctant Razor on board the upcoming payday, trying way too hard with an annoying Chris Tucker imitation. After a while his frantic intrusion tappers off, which leads to something even more ghastly, blunting the dynamic of Bernthal’s character: One of the worst child actors in history, playing Kid’s grandson, enters the show and never leaves...
DeNiro in RAGING BULL |
Will or won’t Razor stay in the fight becomes the only suspense till the final match where two old dudes beat each other raw like that frozen beef. Here’s where we finally get some old school blood and gusto, but it’s much to late to save a missed opportunity involving this rare superstar collective, intriguing and disappointing both cult and mainstream audiences.
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