Fighting

Winter was darn cold this year in New England, according to the folks who have been around here a while. Spring crept in a few weeks ago, and then bang, today it is almost sweltering, as if summer had already arrived. Only two weeks ago, there were still mountains of snow left over behind the multiplex in Leominster. The daffodils had barely come up and now they are gasping in the heat.

My brother-in-law, sunning himself on an outdoor chair this afternoon, said, "We usually get about two weeks like this in August--that's it." Well, things even out. After January and February's repeated cold blasts, who can complain?

It seemed a shame to spend any of this glorious afternoon indoors, but I had sort of fallen behind in my movie watching. Besides, it was a nice excuse for a drive up along the winding backroads to Tyngsboro. On the way I started to get that summer feeling, of making plans for the months ahead.

Having just seen a pair of two-fisted movies back-to-back, it seemed like the right thing to do to make it a hat-trick. The star of Fighting, which just came out this week, is the young and strapping Channing Tatum, one of the brilliant supporting cast of last year's Stop-Loss, a movie I just can't stop raving about.

Tatum plays an Alabama college boy who, at the beginning of the movie, is trying to hustle a living selling fake Harry Potter books on the busy sidewalks of New York. Because of a street altercation, a hustle promoter named Harvey (Terrence Howard) notices him and convinces him to join the world of underground fighting.

Boxing movies are the oldest and most established genre of sports movies in Hollywood history, and so the trajectory of the main plot is not going to be that original. He's down and out and hungry. He wins some fights, impresses people. His manager wants to him to take a dive. He won't. He meets a girl. He chases her, and wins her. Then he finds out she has a secret, and feels betrayed by her. Like I said, the boxing genre is very well established.

But all it takes to make an interesting movie is to have characters you care about, and perhaps a fresh angle. This one had more than a few such novelties, including a subplot involving a rivalry between the protagonist and a high school teammate from Alabama who has already made it big in New York. Given the inevitability of the showdown between the two rivals, it seems unlikely that the protagonist came to New York with any other intention that getting involved in the world of fighting. That was an issue the film never addressed, but it is a forgivable oversight.

The real crux of the narrative is the love story, between the boxer and the Puerto Rican waitress he pursues. He tells her that it is "destiny" that they met. She tells him that it will be destiny if they indeed meet again. Like any good classical hero, he takes destiny in his own hands and arranges to meet her again. The classical paradigm is that this kind of patient persistence in pursuing one's true love is always rewarded. Their relationship is kept honorable by a zealous Puerto Rican grandmother who functions as a comic relief. She is one of the few people in the movie who can actually push around Tatum's character.

But that betrayal I mentioned will cause the rift in the love story that the narrative must heal, in order for the boxer to achieve his victory in the big fight, and thus escape the underground. How is it healed? The twist was fairly forseeable, but nevertheless felt perfect when it arrived, but it had been established exactly at it should have.

There is a wonderful New York subtext in the movie involving the dichotomy between the obscene world of Wall Street wealth and the ground-level world of the street vendors, bodegas, and the souvenir shops. The subway is used as a refuge for the character when he is at his "low point." At the climax we find ourselves fittingly on top of a building in the financial district, a few blocks from the famous statue of Charging Bull. This dichotomy breathed more than a little life into the movie, and is no small reason that I wound up liking it.

Watching this New York City movie, I couldn't help comparing it to Crank: High Voltage, which is set in Los Angeles. Both films offer a panoramic view of the multi-racial underground that seethes below the facade of the normal city.

Well in New York, it seems below the facade. In L.A., it is right on the surface. Something about the comparison comes out in New York's favor. Even in the midst of the a roomful of barely civilized characters, there is something more human about New York than California right now.

Will the movie have a happy ending? Will the young woman prove herself to the boxer, redeeming her breech of trust? Will he win the big fight against his high school rival, and thus earn the right to face his father back in Alabama again?

Oh, come on. You know the answer already. Did I mention what a beautiful day it was?