Post by StevePulaski on Feb 14, 2019 17:05:19 GMT -5
Play It to the Bone (2000)
Directed by: Ron Shelton
Directed by: Ron Shelton
Two aging boxers meet a feisty Lucy Liu on the way to a big match in Play It to the Bone.
Rating: ★★★
Cesar Dominguez (Antonio Banderas) and Vince Boudreau (Woody Harrelson) are a couple of aging prizefighters who've bonded over the last few years due to their mutual feelings that they never got the proper swan-song they deserved. Their opportunity comes when a desperate promoter (Tom Sizemore) gives them a ring when the two boxers who were supposed to serve as the undercard fighters for a Las Vegas fight featuring Mike Tyson can't make it: one is in a drug-induced coma, the other in a drunk-driving wreck. Cesar and Vince are floored, if not a bit apprehensive to fight one another, and negotiate terms that would have the winner eligible to fight for the middleweight championship as well as compensation. The fine details are worked out over the phone, and the two men are left needing to find a way to get from Los Angeles to Vegas in what seems like record-time.
The men request the assistance of their friend Grace (Lolita Davidovich) and her lime-green Oldsmobile. Grace dated both men at one given point, and while she still harbors complicated feelings for both, she sees this trip as one that could potentially get her entrepreneurial ventures off the ground and seizes the opportunity.
The bulk of Ron Shelton's Play It to the Bone focuses on its lofty midsection, which has the three misfits cruising on two-lane highways in order to get where they need to be. A fun scene comes in a diner, as the boys start to get into one another's heads as their destination gets closer. Vince is a reformed Christian who now knows Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior, and upon discovering Cesar's year-long experimentation with homosexuality, as it's put in the film, he is appalled by his friends sinful desires. How do they respond? They both contentiously order waffles at said diner as one man tells the other he's fully aware of the mental mind-games he is playing.
Upon the three lacking the funds to pay for their meal, they are aided by a mysterious, catty hitchhiker (Lucy Liu) who coughs up the money in exchange for a ride. A pair of warm-hearted gestures soon turns frosty as she says just the wrong things in front of the men, namely Vince, to get tempers flaring — something no one needs as the fighters' friendship appears to be rapidly deteriorating the closer they get to Vegas. The final 50 minutes of the film is dedicated to one of the most neutral, even-handed boxing matches you'll ever witness. Cesar and Vince exchange an equitable amount of blows to one another, not to mention enough delivered to the head and neck that both men would be rushed to the hospital by round seven if this film had any kind of realism on its side.
Play It to the Bone works as a comedy — for the most part. Its characters are interesting thanks to their rugged exteriors, although we'd have a real problem on our hands if watching Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson hurl vulgar insults to one another wasn't the least bit entertaining. As a boxing movie, however, its final battle is comparatively week due to its neutrality. When it comes to the sport as its been shown on the big-screen, we've come to expect winners and losers, and when it comes to films by the great Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump), we expect hard-luck losers and arrogant winners not as a genre convention but because of the rich way Shelton is known to write such characters. Play It to the Bone doesn't deliver the latter components as expected, and while the trifecta of solid performances masks some of this deficit — Davidovich is almost as good as she was in Shelton's sophomore effort Blaze, as she's once again simultaneously natural and charismatic in her performance — it doesn't make up for the lack of satisfaction that sours the third act.
Shelton's film works best as a quest narrative about two men desperate in their attempts to prove they still got it. He's wise in letting the film breathe for so long and make the trip to Vegas feel like an eternity as Cesar and Vince's banter goes from mutually supportive to combative and occasionally cruel. The fight's choreography isn't the problem; it's well-shot and reflects the equitability of the match in its angles and overall conceit. But such off-kilter characters and their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reclaim relevance shouldn't have needed as much balance as Shelton delivers. It appears that by the end of the trip, Shelton fell in love with his competitive characters too much that he didn't want to see either walk away too inflated. While that approach might've worked, it leaves Play It to the Bone tacky despite what preceded it feeling appropriate and investing.
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Woody Harrelson, Lolita Davidovich, Tom Sizemore, and Lucy Liu. Directed by: Ron Shelton.