The Boxer

Jim Sheridan's films are always powerful. Shakespearian in their intensity of character conflict, they bristle with grit, are masterfully acted, and propel themselves the way John Ford's best films do. I consider him, even with his limited output, one of the great A list directors. No, his camera work isn't stunning crane and rail ballet, it's old school - but GREAT old school - Zinneman, Ford. And if you're a filmgoer who likes to care deeply about characters, Sheridan makes your kind of film.

Acting doesn't get better or more truthful than Daniel Day Lewis and Emily Watson working together. They're absolutely believable - inspiring actually - as a couple struggling through forbidden love after 14 years apart. The dialogue they work with is A plus and written by Sheridan; thus it's probably tuned collaboratively during rehearsal. Very organic. Great (!) work by Gerard McSorley, Brian Cox (L.I.E.) and David Stott as Ike.

Yep, Northern Ireland as Sheridan portrays it can be dreary, as commented here. But it's also full of humanity, drunkeness, hope, cruelty, love, loyalty, oppression, and a desperate longing for change - all the stuff of true drama. The action commences at the moment Ireland is on the cusp of real but fragile peace. Boxing and the IRA? A one two punch.

I love this film and I'd watch it again with any friend who wanted to see an excellently written and played picture. If you want your blood to boil from some fine performers playing strongly written characters, check this out. Not quite "Elizabeth", but powerful. Good enough dramatically (albeit not quite visually) to sit on the same shelf with Raging Bull.

A former IRA man gets out of the can after 14 years and tries to rebuild his life in his old rundown Belfast neighbourhood.

This is a film that tries to cover a lot of ground and get a lot in. It has natural dramatic plus points in being set in a community that has been wrecked by civil war but has the hope of a new dawn. If only people would let it rise.

Prison does a lot to people. It is like a virus. It wears people down and changes them. Makes them harder and sexless. This is well portrayed in this movie. Boyle (Day-Lewis) has been inside almost all his adult life and is immature, but well contained.

Boxing is not the heart of this movie -- indeed it could live without it completely. It gives a dramatic centre, while the real drama is elsewhere and the message is not contained in the punches. In lots of ways it is a ticket selling con.

Director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot/In The Name of the Father) has done well with the limited material that forms the script. He uses a cool blue to replace the cold grey of the real Belfast. This prevents the place looking as dreadful as it really is and losing the audience.

Ken Stott plays an alcoholic boxing trainer who has a good heart and wants for the best. Sadly I don't put great store in men that decide they want to live their life in a stupor. Stott is a good actor though.

There is also a love story in this movie with Day-Lewis starting top pick up the pieces with his old flame Emily Watson. However the situation is complicated as her close relations don't fully approve (for reasons I don't want to go in to here.)

Any film that involves boxing has to nod to films like Rocky and Raging Bull -- and this film acknowledges it without borrowing too much. Indeed this is not really a boxing picture (as I said before) more a film about a man that uses boxing as he has very little else to cling on to.

The real weak point is the way ex-terrorist Danny (Lewis) is welcomed back and made a hero out of. Wouldn't his criminal record not prevent him from being welcome on the British mainland? Equally how good a boxer is he? Can't tell from the evidence here. Also you need a license to box in the UK -- and these are not handed out willy-nilly.

Small quibbles aside The Boxer is a better film than I thought it would be. It doesn't rub my nose in it any longer than necessary and all the thing really needs is something to climax on. What they come up with here is pretty weak and open.

I really liked this film for several reasons. Firstly, it dares to tell the story of ordinary people caught up in a conflict that they don't want to be a part of, and having their best hopes crushed. The script isn't written to be a crowd-pleaser.

Secondly, the story and the style of narration is wonderfully subdued and lowkey, both fitting the story perfectly and allowing the viewer to really involve him/herself in the story and characters.

Finally, the performances of Day-Lewis and Watson are very good. Day-Lewis lends great credibility to his character. He is no Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford rising again with a firm jaw after each blow, but rather a believable portrait of a man believing and wanting to do his best, but time and time again having his hopes crushed.

But the real star performance of the film is by Watson. After "Breaking the Waves" I had written her off (sorry, but I tend to do that with people who have played in von Trier movies), but her performance in this film is simply outstanding. Her portrait of both pride, strength and vulnerability is amazing.

9 out of 10.

I think the reason this wasn't as well received as MY LEFT FOOT and IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (the previous collaborations of Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Sheridan) is this is telling a more complex tale, and while I loved both of those films, this one you have to work harder for. It should be said there are some lapses, particularly in the dialogue, which is often unnecessarily repeated. And sometimes, in his attempt not to play on our emotions too much, Sheridan goes too far in the opposite direction, making the film too distant.

Still, this is a powerful film. Sheridan was accused with IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER with making an anti-British film, but in that one and this one, he shows he's not afraid of taking on his own people as well. At the same time, while his sympathies are with Day-Lewis' character, he's able to recognize all sides of the situation, as to emphasize the point that peace is always hard work. Day-Lewis, as usual, gives an outstanding performance, though he's a little too old, and Watson continues to grow as an actress with her performance.

After fourteen years in prison for terrorist activities, Danny Flynn is released and returns to his community. Having blanked the IRA members in the jail with him Danny is not very popular but, since he didn't name names, is allowed to live when he comes out. Looking to get past the violence that stole over a decade of his life, Danny reopens his former boxing gym within a local community centre so that he can give the youth of the area something other than hatred and violence. However the discovery of Semtex in the community centre and his insistence that the gym is a non-sectarian venue brings him into direct conflict with the local members of the army council of Sinn Fein/IRA.

Perhaps I should not have watched this film today but it has been sitting on my "to watch" list for ages and I finally got round to it. You say, today the IRA issued a statement saying that the British and Irish governments "should not underestimate the seriousness of the situation" – the situation being them refusing to give up guns now that the police, the Irish government and the British government all believe that the IRA (while on ceasefire and supposedly pursuing peace) carried out the biggest robbery of recent memory in Christmas 2004. Now I do not know for sure whether they did or not but I do believe that all terrorist groups (and the political parties that represent them) should be ejected from government given that they are all (Republican and Loyalist) still involved in violence, beatings and crime. So this film was even more impacting to me because it was released at a time when I had just left Northern Ireland to live in England and at the time peace looked possible – it is typical that the terrorist groups refuse to do anything unless it is on their terms (even a neutral would have to admit that the British government has bent over backwards to get them involved).

Anyway, perhaps this film is the perfect vehicle to watch on such a night because, unlike many films about Northern Ireland, it doesn't have a bias one way or the other, but rather looks at the "ordinary" people who try to deal with the struggle and, like many films on this subject it gets the mood right even if the material is not that hot. By "mood" or "tone" I mean that this film has little hope within it and is not for viewers who are caught up in the current US assurances that terrorism is something that is being beaten by the use of weapons. Watching it on this day I can say that the portrayal of "the people" as keen to see it all settled in a fair way with both groups of terrorists surrendering their weapons, but the whole thing is confused by those who (like today) refuse to give up the gun while still hoping to be a "proper" government. However, outside of this the material is surprisingly weak. Northern Ireland in the mid-nineties didn't quite look like this and many aspects of the story are simplified – partly to make it a easier story but partly to keep up the movie stable that parts of the IRA are actually peace-loving people who would just love to get rid of every last bullet and gun. This material is rather patronising and may annoy those who have actually lived in the conflict rather than viewed it from the mainland.

The story also involves a romance that didn't totally convince me and the usual backdrop of a man trying to get out of the situation; it isn't great but the story has enough going on to hold the attention while also showing the wider depression about the conflict. The cast try hard and they do make the film better thanks to their work. Day-Lewis is always worth a watch and, even if he is a bit self-righteous here, he is still a fine actor and his performance is better than the character he has been given. Likewise Watson seems to have been given an insight into her character that is not available to the audience via the script, however she raises the standard by her work. Cox is good but his character is impossible to buy into. Support is also good from McSorley, Fitzgerald and others.

Overall this is not a great film but it is not a bad one and I suppose Northern Ireland is a very difficult subject to tackle. The story is rather patronising at times and rather bland at others but the film does manage to get the tone right (even if the scenes are a bit OTT at times). Bush may speak with grand words but this film and today's statements from Sinn Fein/IRA show that there are no easy answers and, no matter what the will of the people is, if guns are still involved then there will never be a peace. The film captures this truth well, shame it doesn't do much else as well.