Bleed for This (2016)

Maybe it's the truly amazing turn of events that Vinny went through that makes me give this a high score, but I also love an American sports film. This made 'Bleed For This' right up my street.It's not up in the heady heights of Rocky. But it's easily as good a film as Creed for me.Miles Teller is wonderful, and I really did root for him in this. I was completely unaware of Vinny Pazienza, and I'm more than happy with this film telling me his story.A solid 8 out of 10, and well worth a watch if you like a good underdog film.

This film tells the story of an American boxer, who has a bright future ahead of him. Unfortunately, he is almost killed in a traffic accident, squashing his dreams to continue boxing. He refuses to accept his fate, continues to train and make a spectacular comebackOur hero in the film doesn't give up, working hard against all odds and then achieve the seemingly impossible. This is guaranteed to be an inspiring story, but strangely enough I don't feel the passion and emotions that I thought I would feel. The fight scenes don't seem intense enough either. Fortunately, the production is good, and Aaron Eckhart is almost unrecognisable as the boxing coach, which makes him even more convincing.

Wow! Miles Teller is phenomenal in this story of a boxer that is in a horrific car accident that breaks his neck and then surpasses all odds to mount a comeback and fight in the ring once more. It is baffling that this is a true story and I had not heard hide nor hare of before seeing this movie. Aaron Eckhart and Katey Sagal are practically unrecognizable. All of the actors throw themselves into their roles with abandon. Fantastic truly fantastic. Engaging and enjoyable watching this film.

Bleed For This is a good movie. The acting in it is decent and the story is a great one to tell. When it was over, I thought, "That was really quite good, but something was wrong." The more I though about it, the more problems I had with it. And the biggest problem lied with the direction and casting.All the actors did a decent job doing what they were told to do. Everyone in the film are all good actors and did what they could with what they had. They problem was they didn't have enough to work with. I have to blame the writer, director and makeup people for that. I was a Vinnie Paz fan back in the day and I never saw Miles Teller, or any of the other characters in the movie, really pull off their characters. Hollywood is really, really good at making actors look, talk and act like the people they are trying to portray in real life. Jaime Foxx looked and acted EXACTLY like Ray Charles. Charlize Theron looked and acted EXACTLY like Aileen Wuornos. No one looked or acted like any of the people they were portraying. Miles Teller didn't look or act anything like Pazienza. Aaron Eckhart did a great job. But he didn't look a bit like Kevin Rooney. I could not even tell who was playing Lou Duva, because no one even came close. It was obvious no one looked at any tape or studied any of the characters they were portraying.Vinnie was a 5'7", stocky, brash, cocky, arrogant, flashy guy with a thick accent and bad attitude and difficult to like. Miles Teller is over 6 foot tall, lanky and showed none of the personal characteristics boxing fans loved to hate about Paz. They didn't even cut Teller's hair or give him the attitude to resemble him. He looked and acted nothing like him. Eckhart did well putting some character in the show, but was about 40 pounds shy of Rooney and looked nothing like him. When you are watching a biography story and no one looks or acts like they people the story is about, it makes it hard to pay attention to the story. I don't blame the actors for any of this. I blame the writers, directors and make up people. They are the ones who are supposed to be paying attention to details like this. The actors look how the director wants them to and do what the director tells them to do. If the director wants a flashy personality out of his star character, he should tell him to do it. I think they went much more subdued to make the character more likable. And that is a shame.If you can get past that, the fantastic story makes the movie, overall, worth watching. In fact, if you never knew anything about the actual people in the movie, you would not notice my problems with it. It just seemed lazy to me and they could have done so much more to better represent the real people if they put some extra thought and heart into it and portrayed the characters more true to life.