My favorite scene in Ben Younger’s “Bleed for This” is when Vinny Pazienza (Miles Teller), a teetotaler and drug-abstainer, opts to have his surgical halo screws removed without a local anesthetic. He grunts, screams, wails out in pain, and rips an arm out of the chair he’s seated in. It’s a tour de force moment for Teller, an actor I hadn’t thought much of before now.
I had been planning to do a roundup of all the films I watched, primarily genre stuff, but I felt a unique connection to “Bleed For This” because of the subject matter. Pazienza, staging a late career comeback at a higher weight class is struck in a brutal traffic collision. His spinal injury threatening his ability to walk again, let alone box. After going through a much less severe spinal surgery, I was riveted to this film like the halo screws to “Paz Man”’s forehead.
It’s a twist that made this movie hard to sell as it is better as a story if you go in blind - but without that detail it’s hard to sell this as different than the numerous great boxing movie classics you can rent. It looks to have made 12 million dollars worldwide on a small 6 million dollar budget which is roughly a break even by normal film budget math.
The film’s boxing setpieces look stunning and feel epic. There’s a lot of editing sleight of hand that really gives this film an equal sense of scale to a much larger production like The Fighter. If you are wondering, despite treading incredibly similar ground Bleed for This and The Fighter are wildly different films. I really enjoyed both, I like Bleed for This more.
Pazienza himself makes for great subject matter because he’s not a screaming, abusive menace like Jake LaMotta or a drug addled disaster like Dicky Ecklund. His biggest vice seems to be the blackjack table (the film does not downplay this) and some mild womanizing. For the most part he’s a confident, dedicated, and relatable hero - a serious boxer with a nice family. This forces the film to be creative and not lazily hang its hat on well worn tropes. The relationship between Pazienza and his father Angelo (Ciaran Hinds) and his trainer, Kevin Rooney (a nearly unrecognizable Aaron Eckhart, sublime and deserving of awards consideration for this part)- the disgraced alcoholic mastermind behind the rise of Mike Tyson, are warm and supportive.
I don’t plan on reviewing movies as a central focus here - I’m not very good at it and I ramble -but Bleed for This, and its director deserved a little more attention for the ambition and creativity on display. In a 20 year career Ben Younger has only directed three films with a fourth in development. His debut, Boiler Room - made in his mid twenties is a beloved cult film amongst business students (sigh...) though based on Younger’s deft and nuanced touch here I doubt the film glorifies securities fraud. The other film is a romantic comedy called “Prime” that seems to defy easy description. I’ll be watching both and likely reporting in here.
Younger deserves a better career. Hollywood should be falling all over themselves to finance his projects. Someone who makes ambitious films from original screenplays and is only 45 should look like a priceless commodity in a film industry laid to waste by COVID-19. He’s a name I would pick as a potential star of a second 1970s New Hollywood type film renaissance alongside more obvious choices like the Safdie Brothers and Robert Eggers. Even if he’s been sparsely working for twenty years he had been ahead of his time until now.
Bleed for This is available currently in HD on Netflix or on blu-ray disc for purchase. The soundtrack is excellent, play this one loud.
