This week, the Roberto Duran biopic Hands of Stone is released. I haven't seen it yet, but Duran's (played by Carlos Edgar Ramirez) bouts with Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher! [Raymond]) are nothing short of legendary, especially the controversial "no mas" fight.
The tagline to this movie was "A Glove Story." It is, hands down, the best boxing movie starring Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand in which Babs loses her perfume fortunate after being robbed by her unscrupulous business manager and becomes a boxing manager in order to make it all back while finding love in the process.
Another classic, Anthony Quinn is a podunk puncher who needs to retire. Another brutal loss will leave him with a detached retina or worse. Quinn plays a lumbering but gentle giant, trying to preserve his dignity and avoid exhibition wrestling matches.
At first glance, Girlfight seems like hokum melodrama (the trailer even has a record scratch). Michelle Rodriguez, never better, is mad. Her family situation sucks. School does, too. Once she discovers boxing, though, she, and the movie, soars.
John Ford's classic starring his main man John Wayne isn't much of a boxing movie, really. Wayne's Sean Thornton once killed a man in the ring and hung up his gloves, but it's an all-timer, great love story (Maureen O'Hara!) and makes Ireland seem both beautiful as well as awful. It was studio system filmmaking at its best.
Clubber Lang is one of the finest creations in all of fiction.
What more is there to say about Rocky IV? The movie ended the Cold War!
Arguably the finest boxing doc, and even sports doc.
7) Creed
Ryan Coogler's reboot of the Rocky franchise netted Stallone an Oscar nomination, himself a seat at the Marvel table and solidified Michael B. Jordan as one of the best actors of his generation. Adonis Creed's first fight, a one-take beauty, swooping around the ring, is what filmmaking and boxing flicks are all about.
Daniel [clap] Day [clap] Lewis [clap] is [clap] the [clap] greatest [clap] living [clap] actor [clap].
Boxing is the least dangerous thing Daniel Day-Lewis's Danny Flynn gets himself involved in in this re-team with director Jim Sheridan. But the in-ring stuff is just as thrilling as the drama surrounding forbidden love and Irish separatism.
4) The Fighter
Melissa Leo and the actresses playing Micky Ward's sisters are perfect. Amy Adams and Christian Bale are in top form as Charlene, the love interest, and Dicky, Mark Wahlberg's washed-up, screw-up brother, respectfully. And the former Funky Bunch front man gives the performance of his career this side of The Departed. They're all shepherded to career heights by David O. Russell.
Is The Fighter a perfect movie? No, but it's extremely close.
3) Ali
Michael Mann's portrait of the Greatest is a capital B biopic. Will Smith's never been better than he is here in the title role. Boxing's such fertile ground for film that this one barely cracked our top three.
2) Rocky
Rocky's a perfect movie. The screenplay's perfect. The cast is perfect. I challenge anyone to keep his or her heart rate steady when Bill Conti's iconic score starts up.
The trailer's voice-over ends with, "His name is Sylvester Stallone, but you will always remember him as Rocky." Fact check: True.
1) Raging Bull
Not only the best boxing movie, Martin Scorsese's Jake LaMotta movie is arguably the best American film ever made. Don't @ me.
If there's a finer example of toxic masculinity and guilt, I've yet to see it. The fights are, without a doubt, the best in-ring scenes of all time. They're art. What a great movie.
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