Filmes de Interés Gay

. . The Bond Between
Boxer and Trainer . .

In "Fighting Tommy Riley," another boxing drama is asking audiences to gird themselves for more emotional gut punches. Like "Million Dollar Baby," the pugilist is blessed with the luck of the Irish but cursed by that culture's penchant for calamity. The film, like its Oscar-winning precursor, dwells on a super-close bond between trainer and fighter, but unlike that previous male-female model, this male-to-male dynamic takes on some sexual complications.

Tommy Riley (J. P. Davis) is a poor but noble prospect, who has yet to regain his footing after missteps in the Olympic trials. He wins the attention and affection of a corpulent, aging bachelor with his own losses to live down. Marty Goldberg, played by Eddie Jones, teaches Melville to high schoolers and seems more like another McCourt brother than a scrappy Jewish salt. Either way, he is a philosophizing gym rat, and he uses his stentorian aphorisms to make himself a Gandalf-style mentor to the impressionable Tommy. "Whatever special is, in this madness, I think you've got it," Marty tells him.

There are many clunky lines that work on Tommy but not the audience, who can detect more quickly than the fighter what this old softie is after. The trainer turns his prizefighter into his own prize, an object that he extracts from its normal setting and admires away from the rest of the world. He invents absurd rules for Tommy to follow, as when he forbids jogging to music since there will be none heard in the ring. It's all part of a regimen of workouts and rubdowns that are meant to foster ferocity in the ring but dependency outside of it.

The splendid cinematography favors somber blues and grays in the alleys and unadorned sparring places, and then the film bursts with color when the action travels to a lakeside retreat. There are, unfortunately, many visual clichés, like the training montage with sports-page headlines scrolling across the screen. The performances are more pretty than gritty, and Mr. Davis is too handsome to appear all that desperate. Then, in one of many unsubtle pronouncements, the secretive Marty spills his own beans: "You never know what tragedies lie in a person's wake. You only know what I let you see."

Despite its flaws, the film gets across some genuine melancholy, played up by a sobbing Irish fiddle. The last act dodges and weaves with a well-played episode about sexual bargaining, and again the filmmaker proves that tragedy is best delivered to a heterosexual male audience through a sports context. That said, the pain that "Fighting Tommy Riley" inflicts is an apt payoff, not a sucker punch. ~ Ned Martel (NYT)

Film Information: 'Fighting Tommy Riley'

Web: Cast, Bios and Additional Details at IMDb
Director: Eddie O'Flaherty
Writer: J.P. Davis
Cast, Crew & Credits: Full Cast, Crew & Credits
Genre: Drama Sport
Awards: 1 win
Runtime: 109 min
Spoken Language: English

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