Review

Hands of Stone

Trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) counsels the Panamanian world champion Roberto Duran (Edgar Ramirez) in the boxing bio-pic Hands of Stone.
Trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) counsels the Panamanian world champion Roberto Duran (Edgar Ramirez) in the boxing bio-pic Hands of Stone.

Boxing has many rules and stipulations.

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Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond) and his wife, Juanita (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), contemplate a rematch with Roberto Duran in Jonathan Jakubowicz’s fight drama Hands of Stone.

But other than not hitting below the belt, the single most important one is very simple: Never show fear or cowardice in the ring. You can be scared -- hell, the prospect of getting your butt whupped in front of a crowd of thousands should probably terrify you -- but you can never expose that fear, never back down from the challenge, under any circumstance.

Hands of Stone

88 Cast: Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramirez, Usher Raymond IV, John Turturro, Ellen Barkin, Ana de Armas, Ruben Blades

Director: Jonathan Jakubowicz

Rating: R, for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity

Running time: 105 minutes

Your trainer might see you getting killed and throw his towel to protect you, but you can't stop until you're either up on the ropes celebrating, or down on the canvas knocked flat. This starts to explain why Roberto Duran's infamous "No mas" rematch against Sugar Ray Leonard back in 1980 -- in which the proud Panamanian simply quit at the end of the eighth round, turning his back from Ray in the ring and shaking his head -- stuck in the craw of boxing fans, leading them at the time to an almost universal disdain.

Venezuelan director Jonathan Jakubowicz's striking Duran bio-pic Hands of Stone strongly suggests a reason for the former lightweight champ's refusal to continue, and it had virtually nothing to do with the relatively light-punching theatrics of Leonard, who was determined to humiliate him following the first fight, in which Duran had successfully goaded the fleet Sugar Ray to stand toe-to-toe with him. Duran wasn't afraid of continuing, we're shown in the film, he was fed up with the corrupt orchestration of the sport, and the mounting pressure from his wife and countrymen to continue to beat down the American icon. In that brutally honest moment, he saw all too clearly the way the system was rigged -- fighters fight and give their blood and sweat, while crooked promoters and sponsors rake in the clams at their expense -- and simply couldn't stomach it anymore.

We meet Duran (Edgar Ramirez) at the beginning of his pro career, as his manager, Carlos Eleta (Ruben Blades), tries to convince the young hot-headed brawler to accept the legendary Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) as his new trainer. Arcel has his own history with the sport, having run afoul of the mafia some 20 years before and been warned to stay out of the fight game. At first, the masterful trainer and the young pupil don't see eye-to-eye, but before too long, under Arcel's careful tutelage, Duran starts rocketing up the rankings, until a championship prize fight is within his grasp.

As the film progresses, we also get vignettes of Duran as a boy, growing up poor in Panama City, always in the shadow of the American-protected canal, an arrangement met with increasing vehemence by his fellow countrymen. Born to an American father who immediately left his mother, Duran grows up with an enormous chip on his shoulder, one that is further fueled by fervent anti-Americanism (naturally, this is an issue between he and Arcel at first, but gradually he comes to see that the entire country isn't bad), and a desire to take the imperialist Yankees to task, one beat down at a time.

The main reason there have been such a plethora of boxing dramas in cinema -- highlighted by Rocky, but by no means the beginning of the wave -- is the way the sport can so easily distill complex social politics and tangled emotional webbing into a single 20-square-foot patch of canvas. Invariably, the boxer who wins a given bout is the one who deserves it the most, either through his rough emotional journeys (think Southpaw), or his desire to succeed against all odds (Rocky). What Jakubowicz does, working from his screenplay, is to take some of these common boxing tropes -- the grizzled trainer, the young, unbridled fighter, the rapid rise and descent of a boxer's career -- and rotate them ever so slightly to produce different angles, like the twist of a kaleidoscope.

By the time Duran fights Leonard (Usher Raymond) the first time, our sympathies are already a bit divided. Duran had repeatedly called Leonard a "clown." Then when Duran meets up with Sugar Ray and his entourage, he promptly insults him and his wife. When he goes on to win the bout, taking home the championship belt, we see the Panamanians glued to their TVs, and storming the streets in celebration, but still can't quite feel as if boxing justice has been done.

It's an interesting angle, especially for an American audience. Jakubowicz, a native South American, doesn't glom onto the easier story -- about the ever-affable and supremely talented Leonard. He sticks with the complex and conflicted Duran, whose fractured psyche, fighting for himself, his homeland, his family, and emotionally against the father who deserted him, provides far more dramatic resonance. In the process, he also exposes a small corner of America's overbearing and condescending policies in Central America at the time, as the CIA was continually backing one military leader over another from country to country in order to "preserve democracy," inevitably leading to regional chaos.

In this shrewd film, no one is left off the hook, including Arcel, who is shown to have had an adopted daughter (played by De Niro's actual daughter, Drena) he hid from his long-standing second wife (Ellen Barkin, a joy to watch on screen again); and certainly not Duran, who is forced to live with the branding of being a coward until he finally gets back in the ring with his mindset restored. It makes for a surprisingly interesting film, more subtle and multifaceted than the usual easy rise-and-fall justice typical of the genre.

We see Duran at his best and worst, and still come away with an enormous amount of respect for what he was able to accomplish. The infamous "No mas" bout becomes a small part of a much larger life. As far as bio-pics go -- especially of still-living subjects -- we could not hope for anything more candid.

MovieStyle on 08/26/2016

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