Bleed for This (15)
three stars
Dir: Ben Younger
With: Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart
Runtime: 117 mins
IT’S that man Aaron Eckhart again, this time playing a boxing coach in a true tale of a fighter who suffered near catastrophic injuries in a car crash. Miles Teller plays Vinny Pazienza, the young boxer who refuses to accept that the fight game is up. The first half of Ben Younger’s sporting drama is a straight-up boxing picture, complete with all the cliches, such as training to pounding music, Rocky-style. The second half is where it becomes more interesting, and a greater focus on this part of the story would have made for less of a viewing slog.
Chi-raq (15)
four stars
Dir: Spike Lee
With: Teyonah Parris, Samuel L Jackson
Runtime: 127 mins
SPIKE Lee is back on the cinema track, and how, with this drama looking at gun crime in America through the lens of ancient Greek tragedy. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is Lee’s guide as he sets out life in contemporary Chicago, dubbed Chi-raq because black deaths due to shootings are far in excess of US combat fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Teyonah Parris is terrific as the citizen determined to bring peace to the streets through, er, unusual means, while Samuel L Jackson holds the story together as the narrator. It’s a too-long, high-wire act of a film, using rap in place of dialogue, and occasionally it hits the ground. But when it works, wow.
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