Toronto: Two Boxing Biopics, 'Bleed for This' and 'The Bleeder,' Aren't Quite a Cut Above
To paraphrase that great cinematic pugilist from On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy, these days it seems like every male star of a certain age sees themselves as a contender. Since 2015, we’ve had Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael B. Jordan, and Edgar Ramirez pack on the muscle and slip on the boxing gloves for roles in Southpaw, Creed, and Hands of Stone, respectively. Two more leading men joined the fray at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival: Miles Teller in Bleed for This, directed by Ben Younger (Boiler Room), and Liev Schreiber in The Bleeder, from director Philippe Falardeau. Not only do the films share similar titles, but both are based on real-life boxers’ stories, a la 2010’s The Fighter, which told the story of Micky Ward — and won Oscars for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo. Teller weighs in as former super middleweight champ Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Paz (a.k.a., Vinny Pazienza), while Schreiber portrays heavyweight rumbler, Chuck “The Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner.
Despite their common ground, the two films do diverge…slightly. Bleed for This, for example, takes numerous jabs at an inspirational comeback story in between throwing traditional boxing movie haymakers. And Paz’s life story surely demands that kind of treatment; after getting an unlikely title shot and winning, the Rhode Island-born fighter had it all snatched away when a car accident left him with a broken neck and the possibility of permanent paralysis. That accident happens at the movie’s midpoint, giving us plenty of opportunity to see Teller embody Paz in his cocky prime before the devastating injury forces him to work his way back up again.
In a way, the redemptive storyline somewhat parallels Teller’s own bumpy career path of late. After 2014’s Whiplash catapulted him from background player in movies like Footloose and Divergent to Next Big Thing status, Teller stumbled with the high-profile disaster, Fantastic Four, as well as an infamous Esquire interview. (In an appropriate bit of scheduling, Bleed for This had its Toronto premiere in the same theater where La La Land, the buzzy new musical from Whiplash auteur, Damien Chazelle, debuted to a rousing standing ovation earlier in the evening.)
Related: ‘La La Land’ Wows Toronto — Is This the Most Raved-About Movie of the Year So Far?
Placed in the position of being the comeback kid onscreen and off, Teller throws himself into the part, bulking up for the boxing sequences and contorting his body after Paz’s accident, when the fighter’s mobility was limited by the cranial halo he had to wear to keep his neck and spine in place. In one of the movie’s more gruesome sequences, director Ben Younger allows the camera to linger on a doctor removing the bloody screws that attach the halo to Paz’s skull. That scene was too much for some audience members; I saw one viewer in the row next to mine make a beeline for the door before the final screw was pulled out.
Kudos to Teller on his pain-endurance levels, but on any judge’s scorecard, the winning performance in Bleed for This belongs to Aaron Eckhart, who gets his full Burgess Meredith on as Paz’s washed-up trainer, Kevin Rooney. Sporting a beer gut in place of a six-pack and adopting an almost cartoonish Noo Yawk accent, Eckhart has a blast playing the Mickey to his co-star’s Rocky, and the movie lags whenever he’s not on screen. It may be a broad performance, but at least Rooney shows some personality. As written by Younger and played by Teller, Vinny leads with only one defining characteristic: the need to get back into the ring and fight. That drive is clearly what made him a champion, but it doesn’t make him an especially interesting character in his own biopic.
Related: 10 Awesome Fights in Boxing Movie History
Schreiber’s Chuck Wepner, on the other hand, has character oozing out of his pores, not to mention all the bloody gashes he collects in the ring. (Those are what earned him his nickname, after all.) A big-talking working-class Joe from New Jersey who supplemented his boxing income with stints as a loan shark’s debt collector, Wepner attained worldwide prominence in 1975 when promoter Don King plucked him out of obscurity to go toe-to-toe in a championship fight with Muhammad Ali. The fight was stopped and Ali declared the winner on a TKO with a mere 19 seconds to go in the 15th round, but deep underdog Wepner was acclaimed for managing to almost go the distance with the far more accomplished champ. If that story sounds familiar, it’s because Sylvester Stallone borrowed it for Rocky, creating one of the classic boxing movies in the process.
The Wepner vs. Ali bout is re-created halfway through The Bleeder, but it’s a far cry from Balboa vs. Creed, marred by too many cost-cutting measures and an actor (Pooch Hall) who captures little of the Greatest’s swagger. Fortunately, the filmmakers found the right guy to play Stallone — Morgan Spector, who does an uncanny impersonation of ’70s-era Sly. And the film’s primary interest really lies with Wepner’s life outside the ring rather than in it, especially after Rocky becomes a big fat hit. With his fictional counterpart outstripping his own real-life achievement, the Bayonne Bleeder starts acting like the celebrity he believes he should be, which means cocaine binges, strippers, and raging parties that drive his wife (Elisabeth Moss) and daughter away. As Wepner’s life circles the drain and bottoms out, The Bleeder starts shadowboxing Goodfellas, right down to Schreiber’s jaunty narration that plays over scenes of his character’s bad behavior.
Unlike Goodfellas, The Bleeder can’t resist pulling its punches and going for the uplifting ending, one in which Wepner sorts his life out with the help of his third wife Linda (Naomi Watts, Schreiber’s real-life partner). To be fair, that’s the arc that the real Bleeder followed, but it’s a rushed transformation on screen, one that’s only believable because Schreiber brings the full force of his imposing charisma and physical presence. In the battle of Teller vs. Schreiber, Schreiber emerges as the clear victor. But if we’re talking Bleed For This v. The Bleeder, they essentially knock each other out.
Watch a trailer for Martin Scorsese’s classic movie about boxer Jake LaMotta, ‘Raging Bull’:
