Hands Of Stone Is A Feast Of Fury

Hands Of Stone

Starring Edgar Ramirez, Robert De Niro

Directed by Jonathan Jacubowicz

Rating: ****(4 Stars)

Movie Review: Grumpy trainer, abrasive young self-destructive boxer…win lose …lose win…haven’t we seen it all in numerous films of such far-ranging caliber and curiosity as Million Dollar Baby, Mary Kom and this year’s Saala Khadoos?

So what makes Hands Of Stone a comfortable fit? It’s the sheer energy that outflows from the narrative, dragging and leading with it, the characters who are as inflammatory as they are intimate.

Straightoff  the very watchable Venezuelian import Edgar Ramirez who is currently jostling for  one of the top spots  in Hollwood(see his miniseries Carlos and you’ll know why) is the mainstay of this pugilistic treat. Clenched, tense, seething with the anger of cultural injustice and racial segregation Ramirez’s portrayal  of the real-life boxer Roberto Duran is  one of the most engaging true-life characters I’ve seen on screen from any country.

Ramirez’s Duran is a bit of a jerk. He shows an abundance  of disrespect and insensitivity towards all those who are close to him: his coach and mentor the legendary former boxer Ray Arcel, his sexy girlfriend (Ana De Armas), and his friends from his days of poverty struggle—there is sad scene where he insults a friend at a party– and finally his own talent and skills in the boxing ring.

In one of the many arresting volatile sequences in this angry film Duran is shown smashing his former coach’s swanky cars as the coach watches from his home’s balcony, unshaken by his former pupil’s aggressive tantrum.

This is a skilled cocksure(pun intended)  seething boxer whose atrocious behaviour is condoned by everyone who comes  in contact him. There is no other reason to like Duran except that he is played by Edgar Ramirez, an actor so skilled he makes the scenes in the boxing ring  look like extensions of his character’s long-festering angst.

The well-crafted but eminently predictable  film moves back in time to show Ramirez’s dangerous life as a young illegal migrant in the  US.As Panamanians hoist their flag on American land the little protagonist steals apples to share with his large family.This kind of unabashed sentimentality goes well with the film’s tenor of directness.

Duran’s  rise to the status of an American sports hero is sudden swift and destructive. Fellow-Venezualiam director  Jonathan Jacubowicz taps his leading man’s migratory indignation  effectively and powerfully.Ramirez in the ring and outside it conducts himself with a ruinous arrogance reminiscent of Robert de Niro’s  boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull. 

Hands Of Stone doesn’t aspire to be  Great Cinema  like Raging Bull. It is selfassertively confident about being an engaging rise and fall saga with some heartstopping fights in the ring. The soundtrack  from the 1980 including whiffs of Donna Summer to show Duran’s descent into hedonism, is interestingly nostalgic without wasting time on mourning for the past.

Even the way Duran meets his long-estranged father conveys  the sense of perfunctoriness that we soon recognize to be the film’s chosen narrative mood.

The  film’s greatest strength is its fallen hero’s weaknesses.As Ramirez strips Roberto Duran naked in front of the camera, we watch a straightforward moral fable  told with no elements of the unexpected  . Chapters  from  Duran’s life come undone   with an easy clarity and fluency that  disregards the deeper thrusts  in the protagonist’s shallow characterization.

Surprisingly Robert de Niro as Duran’s coach and mentor looks disinterested  in the goings-on.Perhaps that is part of his character’s long and winding lifescape’s experiences reaching a saturation point.Musician Usher has a substantial role as Duran’s nemesis and main opponent in the ring. Usher comes across as more of a poet than a fighter in film that has no room for or patience with poetry.

But then again I may be reading too much in a film that commands us to go nowhere beyond where the director takes us. Digress at  your own  risk.