BEFORE: I went to a food and beer tasting event last night, one of those well-organized ones where about 25 or so restaurants have tables set up and hand out small samples of their food, and the food's already been paired with samples from craft breweries, by people who know how to do such things. I've been to this annual event twice before, and both times fell JUST shy of making it all the way around the space and tasting everything. So this time, the challenge was to move quickly between stations, taking photos of the signs listing the names of the food and beer, rather than writing down notes. (Just like with the bird-watching in "The Big Year", or my movie selection process, the challenge is to not get so caught up in the note-taking process that you miss out on the experience itself.)
The night was successful, my drinking companion and I made it to every single table, and I tasted a food or beverage sample from each one. While the logical, OCD side of my brain was congratulating me for doing everything in an orderly fashion and sampling everything, the other part of my brain wished we could have just stood next to the tables serving pieces of whole roast hog and barleywine ale, tasting sample after sample of just that. Which would have been delicious, but hardly sporting, and also not medically recommended.
But it happened to be the most humid day of the year - screw that, perhaps the most humid day of all time, thanks to two days of 90-degree NYC heat, plus an afternoon thunderstorm that did a little to cool things off, but not much. The whole city just got soaked and then smelled like wet dog - and inside the event, there were 500 people crammed into two floors of event space, an A/C ventilation system that clearly wasn't up to the challenge, and some stations were even grilling food to order. So after about an hour I was dripping with sweat, and by the end I think I was more of a liquid than a solid human. And drinking beer tends to dehydrate people even further, so I'm honestly surprised that people weren't passing out left and right. A beer festival in late July really, really, needs to be held outdoors, or in a completely air-conditioned space.
Tonight's film is set in a prison in the desert, so sweltering conditions probably prevail there as well. No Michael Buffer tonight, instead boxing commentator Jim Lampley carries over from "Grudge Match". Why do we call these sports people "commentators", anyway? Shouldn't the job be called "commentor"? Because that's what they do, they make comments - they don't commentate, right? That shouldn't be a word. It's like when people say "disorientate" instead of "disorient" or "conversate" instead of "converse" - why add a syllable and make the word more complicated than it needs to be?
THE PLOT: When heavyweight champion George 'Iceman' Chambers lands in prison, the resident gangster arranges a boxing match with the reigning prison champ.
AFTER: I'm not sure how believable this film is supposed to be. I mean, there's a lot about boxing that I don't understand, and there's a lot about prison that I don't care to know - but would a prison with some of the worst murderers and rapists in the country also be outfitted with one of the nicest boxing rings ever built? (Plus, isn't every fight in prison already considered a "steel cage" match?) This thing looks like the Octagon from MMA fighting, but it's a PRISON. The whole point of incarceration is to limit prisoners' rights, and here we are providing them with sports equipment, training and the best boxing matches that can be arranged? Plus the prisoners all get front-row seats? What's wrong with this picture?
Apparently this is all done on an intramural basis between prisons - one prison's champ takes on another prison's champ, for bragging rights, I guess, or maybe just for the amusement of the warden and guards. (Hey, they had a prison rodeo in "Stir Crazy", why not a boxing league?) And one guy's been in so long, trained so well and beat so many fights, the reasoning is that he could probably take on the heavyweight champion of the world.
Which is exactly what happens, when the real champ gets locked up on a he-said/she-said rape charge. Any similarity to real-life boxers being incarcerated is purely coincidental. No, wait, I meant purely intentional. We're programmed to hate this guy, I think, because of the (probable) rape he committed, and his arrogance in thinking that there's no way a prison boxer could even challenge a real boxer. Why is this so hard for him to understand? This guy's been training for like a decade, under prison conditions, and he's beaten everyone in every weight class you can name. Don't let the word get out, or we'll see all kinds of boxing champions committing crimes, just to get locked up so they can be part of this tough training program...
Like the pair of boxers in "Grudge Match", these two boxers are destined to meet and fight again and again, only every time they do here, it leads to a potential prison riot. So the film had to engineer a way to keep them apart - putting one in solitary did the trick. Great, now how's he supposed to train for the match? And where did he get all those matchsticks and that glue?
Nobody like someone who acts all entitled, and that's what the real title-holder is. He wants a CD player in prison, he doesn't want anyone talking to him, he even turns down the offers for intimate companionship in prison - now, that's just damn impolite. By removing the prison champion from the general population, the other prisoners (and the audience) don't develop a similar hatred for him, so we all end up rooting for the prison champ over the real-world champ.
But, as the old joke goes, if he's the "undisputed" champion, then why is everyone still fighting over the title? There's always going to be at least one guy willing to dispute the champ's status as the champ, right? And anyone with a title is going to have to defend that title, sooner or later, so the word "undisputed" only had any meaning at all after that period when there were like three different boxing organizations with different champions. Otherwise, it's an unnecessary term - there's no difference between "world champion" and "undisputed world champion", because if someone can legally challenge his status, then he's not really the world champion to begin with.
The film follows the (by-now) familiar pattern of telling us, via graphics on the screen, the name of each inmate and the crime they're incarcerated for. I've seen this on TV shows like "Oz", and I presume it's also done on "Orange Is the New Black". But, with only a few exceptions, this is not something the audience needs to know in this film - the vast majority of the time, it doesn't matter. The characters even point out that it's against the code of ethics for the inmates to ask each other why they're in jail - so why does the audience need to know? It's not really about the minor inmates' stories, anyway.
Considering the overcrowding problem in U.S. prisons, maybe we should institute a boxing program, where the highest-ranked boxers could win earlier parole? Except for those serving life sentences, of course. They would certainly have an incentive to win matches, because each win could take them one step closer to being released. And then every year the prison champion (winner of a televised final bout, of course) could be released right into Don King's custody so he could start training for a boxing career on the outside.
NITPICK POINT: Why is there a boxing announcer/commentator inside the prison? OK, he's probably an inmate who calls the matches, but why is this necessary? It's not like the match is being broadcast on the radio or TV, not even after the Iceman gets in the ring. And every inmate who wants to see the match is probably there already - so who is he broadcasting to? Some kind of in-house prison radio channel for the guys in solitary confinement to listen to? Like the commentators seen in "Pitch Perfect", this is most likely there for the benefit of the movie audience, so we can understand what's happening, but the presence of the character makes no sense.
Also starring Wesley Snipes (last seen in "The Fan"), Ving Rhames (last seen in "Jacob's Ladder"), Peter Falk (last seen in "The Great Race"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Jon Seda, Wes Studi (last seen in "A Million Ways to Die in the West"), Fisher Stevens (last seen in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), Denis Arndt, Ed Lover, Amy Aquino, Dayton Callie, with cameos from Peter Jason (last seen in "Some Kind of Hero"), Maureen O'Boyle.
RATING: 5 out of 10 mess hall trays
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