December 3, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Jack Huston
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City on December 8, 1989, the dramatic film “Day of the Fight” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A former champion boxer with a troubled past prepares to make a comeback on the day he has a championship fight.
Culture Audience: “Day of the Fight” will appeal primarily to are fans of the movie’s headliners and well-acted movies about people seeking redemption.
“Day of the Fight” doesn’t have much of a plot, but this moody and introspective drama has believable performances. This story about a troubled boxer is more about the fight with his inner demons than any boxing inside the ring. And the entire story takes place during a 24-hour period. In other words, viewers should not expect “Day of the Fight” to be like “Rocky” and “Raging Bull,” which show several boxing matches leading up to a crucial championship fight.
“Day of the Fight,” written and directed by Jack Huston, is his feature-film directorial debut after years of being known mostly as an actor. Jack Huston (who is a grandson of legendary filmmaker John Huston) does not appear on camera in “Day of the Fight” which had its world premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. The movie has a lot of great talent, but the story might not be action-oriented enough for some viewers expecting to see a lot of boxing matches.
“Day of the Fight” might get a few comparisons to “Raging Bull” (the Oscar-winning 1980 film directed by Martin Scorsese) because—just like “Raging Bull”—it’s a movie filmed in black and white, and it’s about an emotionally damaged middleweight boxer who wants to make a comeback. Scorsese has publicly praised “Day of the Fight,” which is a solid directorial debut from Jack Huston, but it won’t be considered a classic like “Raging Bull,” a movie about real-life boxer Jake LaMotta.
“Day of the Fight” takes place in New York City on December 8, 1989. (The movie was actually filmed in New Jersey.) In “Day of the Fight,” Michael “Mikey” Flannigan (played by Michael C. Pitt) is a boxer who is at tail end of his career because he’s in his 40s. Mikey was a champion middleweight boxer in his 20s, but his career was curtailed because of a scandal that sent him to prison for a number of years. The movie slowly reveals what this scandal was in several flashbacks.
By the time this story takes place, Mikey (a bachelor who lives alone) has been out of prison for a certain period of time that has been long enough for him to be on the comeback trail. On the day portrayed in the move, Mikey will have a televised championship boxing match at Madison Square Garden. Mikey, who is recovering from alcoholism, has a day job as a construction worker and has fallen on hard times. An early scene in the movie shows him selling a ring that used to be owned by his dead mother. The ring is worth about $10,000, but Mikey sells it for $7,000.
Mikey had a very traumatic childhood and has complicated feelings about it. Mikey is still haunted by how his mother died when he was about 11 or 12 years old. Flashbacks show Mikey’s unnamed mother (played by Shannan Click) and Mikey (played by Cypress Huston) when he was about this age. Mikey’s unnamed father (played by Joe Pesci), a former singer, was very abusive to Mikey in Mikey’s childhood. But now, Mikey’s father has dementia. Pesci has a small but very effective role in the movie.
Most of “Day of the Fight” shows Mikey doing a little bit of training, but the movie is primarily about how Mikey visits certain people and tries to repair his relationships with them or get their advice on how to make his life better. The people he interacts with the most during the course of the story are people he’s known for several years.
Mikey’s confidants include his no-nonsense trainer Stevie (played by Ron Perlman), who has known Mikey for 25 years and who owns Stevie’s Gym, the name of the place where Mikey trains; Mikey’s friendly uncle Colm (played by Steve Buscemi), who is a manager at Stevie’s Gym; and Father Patrick Donnelly (played by John Magaro), a Catholic priest who has known Mikey since they were childhood students together. All of them know about Mikey’s troubles and have forgiven him for his mistakes and misconduct.
But there are two people whose forgiveness Mikey wants the most: his ex-girlfriend Jessica (played by Nicolette Robinson) and their daughter Sasha (played by Kat Elizabeth Williams), who is now 13 years old. Jessica and Sasha have been estranged from Mikey for years because Jessica ended her relationship with Mikey shortly after he went to prison. Mikey spent most of Sasha’s childhood in prison. The scenes with Pitt and Robinson are performed with a raw intensity that is very realistic of an estranged ex-couple who are parents of the same child.
Jessica is a part-time nightclub singer, so the movie has a scene of Robinson doing a lovely and poignant version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.” The end credits also feature an original song called “Mikey’s Song” performed by Robinson and featuring Pesci, who’s been a singer/recording artist in real life. There’s a scene in “Day of the Fight” where Mikey plays an album that was recorded by Mikey’s father, as a way to help Mikey’s father remember his past. The singer heard in this scene is Pesci. (Fun fact: Pesci co-starred in “Raging Bull” as Joey LaMotta, the younger brother/manager of Jake LaMotta.)
“Day of the Fight” has a wandering quality to it that doesn’t ring quite true of what a boxer would be doing on the day of a high-profile and intense boxing match that will be televised. Still, a lot of it does make sense once it becomes clear that Mikey is still in love with Jessica and wants a chance to possibly get back together with her. Some of the scenes are artistically filmed in a dream-like way, while other scenes are gritty, as a reflection of whatever Mikey’s mood is in each scene. “Day of the Fight” takes viewers on an emotional journey with Mikey and is worth seeing as a story that shows how a boxer’s psychological state of mind is just as important—if not more important—than a boxer’s physical condition.
Falling Forward Films will release “Day of the Fight” in select U.S. cinemas on December 6, 2024.
