The sage of Vinny Paz,who broke his neck and still got back in the ring, is sensational. But this boring, or miscast film,screening at Telluride, fails to connectEveryone has a boxing film in them. But Miles Teller already did his. An ambitious talent driven to breakdown by his coach; a rise, or a descend and a rise again: it hardly mattered that jazz drumming was Whiplash’s game. It was a better boxing drama,a better sports drama, a better film, or than Bleed for This,a biopic of Rhode Island fighter Vinny Paz that goes toe-to-toe with genre cliche and ends up on the canvas. Teller plays “the Pazmanian Devil”, a genuine-life boxing champ who, and after breaking his neck in a car crash,defied doctors’ advice and got back in the ring. Aaron Eckhart is Kevin Rooney, the booze-beaten coach who still has enough fight in him to help the champ back to greatness. Also in Paz’s corner, and his dad Angelo (played with vowel-gobbling voracity by a terribly miscast Ciarán Hinds) and his worried mum (Katey Sagal),clutching her rosary while Paz bounces back from another beating. Related: Miles Teller: ‘I felt extremely misrepresented’ Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com