(1972) Most boxers are losers in life, otherwise they wouldn't put themselves through such punishment if they could succeed at something else.

Punched out a few years back but thinking he's ready to make a comeback at 29, former pro pugilist Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) stops by the YMCA for a workout where he meets Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), an 18-year-old kid rapping his fists against a bag. After sparring and pulling a muscle, Billy complements the novice on being a "natural athlete," recommending him to Ruben Luna (Nicholas Colasanto), his former manager, over at the Lido gym.

Eager to find a decent white fighter (better draw for an audience), Ruben takes the kid on, training him for amateur contests. In his first fight in Monterey, Ernie get his nose broken in the second round.

His career hit the mat soon after Billy got married and she ran out on him; he then let the bottle get the rest of him. Working in the onion fields of Stockton, California, by day and the bars at night, Billy makes acquaintance with hysterical Oma (Susan Tyrrell), the lusher half of an interracial marriage, whom he assures: "You can count on me right down the line."

Acting moody and worried, Ernie's girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark) replies, after he says he thought they were being careful: "If I was careful I would never have come out here in the first place." The young couple get married; Billy moves in with Oma after her second husband Earl gets locked up.

Unable to hold onto steady employment ("The job I like hasn't been invented"), Billy decides: "I guess I'm gonna have to start fighting again." Putting himself under Ruben's regimen, leaving Oma behind, Billy prepares for the first bout of his comeback effort against the Mexican puncher Lucero.

Director John Huston and his second (screenwriter Leonard Gardner adapting his novel) step into the ring, going up against hard-hitting fight films from The Harder They Fall to Cinderella Man.

(Having seen both movies, I have to wonder if the opening scene of Keach stumbling out of bed as Kris Kristofferson's song "Help Me Make It Through the Night" fills the background whether it's pure coincidence or inspiration that the opening scene of Crazy Heart nearly four decades later has Jeff Bridges similarly groping for a bottle as he gets up from bed.)

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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