Category Archives: Movies

Let’s Get a Boxing Movie

Jim Amato, Movies

            By Jim Amato

      Senior Boxing Writer 

Since this is the holiday season you may have some time off of work to relax and watch a few movies. There are several classic boxing movies that are available at your local video store to fill a void left by a lack of live boxing action. I’m going to list some of my favorites that you may find entertaining. “Gentleman Jim”, the story of James J. Corbett is my personal favorite. Errol Flynn is great as Corbett and Ward Bond is even better as John L. Sullivan. Next up would be Paul Newman as Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me”. Then Robert DeNiro in the story of Jake LaMotta titled “Raging Bull”.

Robert Ryan is a hard luck, aging but proud fighter in “The Set Up”. Charles Bronson plays a bare knuckle battler and James Coburn is his fast talking manager in “Hard Times”.  More than a boxing movie, with a great cast like Marlon Brando, Rod Stieger and Lee J. Cobb, is “On The Waterfront”. It gave us Brando’s character, Tommy Malloy’s unforgetable line,”I coulda’ been a contender”.

At the Movies…

Movies

I am often asked about boxing movies, and which one is the best. My personal best is Raging Bull, but a close second is one that nobody talks about except me and that movie is “The Set-Up” (1949) starring Robert Ryan.

The list of boxing movie’s is endless Raging Bull (1980), Rocky (1976), Gentleman Jim (1942), The Great White Hope (1970), Fat City (1972), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), The Harder They Fall (1956), Ali (2001), Cinderella Man (2005), Requim For A Heavyweight (1962) are the ten at the top of most movie critic lists.

In “The Set-Up,” Robert Ryan plays an aging fighter who is brutally punished for refusing to take a dive. The plot line has been used many times in boxing movies, but the beauty of this film is it captures the corrupt underworld in the golden era of boxing and Ryan is nothing less than brilliant in the lead role. Ryan himself was a collegiate boxing champion at Dartmouth.

The movie is directed by Robert Wise who has directed such outstanding films as The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, Run Silent – Run Deep, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles, The Hindenburg, and The Andromeda Strain, just to name a few.

I fully recommend this film to any boxing fan. “The Set-Up” is worth viewing, as I consider it to be one of the best films on boxing that I have ever seen!