Boxing and cinema have enjoyed a long relationship. The first boxing match to be filmed was way back in 1894, when early American producer and Thomas Edison protégé William KL Dickson filmed a contest between Jack Cushing and Mike Leonard, aka the ‘Beau Brummell’ of pugilism. Only 37 seconds of the match were recorded, and nobody today seems to care that Leonard won, but the bond forged between boxing and the movies 120 years ago shows no signs of breaking.
On the day when the new Stallone/De Niro vehicle Grudge Match is released, Let us guide you by the glove, then, as we run down the finest boxing films of all time…
Raging Bull
Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece is at once one of the best sport films ever made – few films have ever got so under the skin of just why someone would make such sacrifices to excel physically, and what it can do to them – and possibly the best film ever made about masculinity.
Taking a professional fighter with jealousy and rage issues as his representative for half the human race, Scorsese is unafraid the show both the ugliness of uncontrolled male rage, and the fear of the little boy who can so often lie behind it.
With fights that are at the same time exhilarating, disgusting and perfect representations of the main character’s psychology, and dazzling performances all round, this is the peak of Scorsese’s glittering career.
Rocky
A thousand ad men may have tarnished Rocky by overplaying the theme tune in lazy commercials, but there’s a reason the film has become a reference point for three generations of people. In these irony-drenched days, stories of genuine uplift are met at best with a raised eyebrow – but when they’re delivered with this much sincerity, they’re pretty much irresistible.
It speaks volumes that one of the most uplifting films ever made (Rocky) and one fo the darkest (Raging Bull) were both about boxers.
When We Were Kings
Boxing as a staged event is inherently cinematic. Months of training and trash-talking are followed by an explosion of action in a tiny space, with cameras and a braying audience avidly watching on. It makes sense, then, that one of the finest boxing films should be a documentary, and it especially makes sense that this doc should focus on boxing’s most titanic figure: Muhammad Ali.
Covering the dramatic circumstances the 1974 rumble in the jungle, the film looks at the confluence of black nationalism, culture and Ali’s unique status as part-martyr, part-loudmouth. It's a thrilling look at a period of intense sporting and social tension.
Million Dollar Baby
It’s tough to talk about Million Dollar Baby without giving away some of the surprises that make it one of the best boxing movies, and one of the best of director/star Clint Eastwood’s long career. Suffice to say, what starts out looking like yet another triumph-of-the-underdog tale turns into something else, taking on enormous moral weight that ultimately lands with the force of a knock-out punch.
Fat City
Legendary director John Huston was a boxer himself, and had his fair shares of knocks in a life that saw ups, downs, and some serious drinking, so this examination of failure has the ring of bitter truth.
Stacy Keach is a has-been fighter, Jeff Bridges is a future has-been, and this meandering look at their relationship steers clear of phony heroics, and instead uses the boxing ring as the metaphorical arena where every man must take life’s jabs and do what they can.
Sounds depressing, but really isn’t.
Ali
Michael Mann’s legendary eye for detail gets a workout in this epic look at the key years of Muhammad Ali’s life, which also functions as a backdoor history of the civil rights movement in Sixties America.
How many sports or athletes could be used for the same purpose? Will some hologram maker of the 2030s tell the history of our era through the story of David Beckham?
Unlikely.
The Fighter
American Hustle director David O Russell’s comeback film is an unusual hybrid of many of the familiar elements of various boxing films, packing in the brothers dynamic of Ragin Bull, the underdog element of Rocky, the period detail of Ali, and much else besides.
Even in 2010, though, these ingredients were still fresh, and combined with a new focus on the role of the women in the eponymous boxer’s life, it built into one of the year’s most satisfying films.
Rocky IV
If the first Rocky is a parable of the triumph of the common man shot with a realism well-suited to the gritty Seventies, the gloss and glitz of the Eighties required a different approach.
By the time of second sequel, the franchise was pure camp (Rocky III has both Mr T and Hulk Hogan), but Rocky IV is where the silliness became transcendent. Clint Eastwood’s examinations of mortality and morality are all very well, but do they have James Brown belting out ‘Living in America,’ Dolph Lundgren playing a robot, an actual robot, and a lovably naff pro-détente message?
Somebody Up There Likes Me
James Dean was set to play Rocky Graziano in this true-life Fifties classic, but died before the cameras began turning. A young Paul Newman stepped in, was electrifying, and a star was born.
With beautiful black and white photography, and solid direction from Citizen Kane editor Robert Wise, this little-seen gem is proof positive of the virtues of old Hollywood.
Cinderella Man
Russell Crowe is a Very Serious Actor, and actors love boxer parts because it gives them the chance to flaunt months spent in the gym learning a new skill (not to mention the fact that it places them in tradition of De Niro et al).
Crowe clearly put the time in for Cinderella Man, and although the script occasionally segues into the schmaltzy, his portrait of a decent man amid the depredations of the Great Depression has taken on an added resonance after the 2008 crash.
