It’s safe to say that I know very little about boxing. Outside of films like Fight Club, The Fighter, and Creed, my expertise in this subgenre is limited. Yet, to my surprise, I found myself connecting with The Fight Machine over a very simple premise — we’re all fighting for something. Sounds a little cliché, but it’s true, and filmmaker Andrew Thomas Hunt crafts a memorable illustration through the world of boxing.
The film opens with narration from the first of its main characters, Paul Harris (Greg Hovanessian, Another Life). He’s monologuing about how a person can alter the very essence of who they are by changing a mere five percent. He uses the analogy of the universe to quantify that change. Compared to the hundreds and billions of galaxies and celestial bodies that exist in our known universe, we can only see five percent. Now, in reflection, that five percent seems like a huge deal.
After this brief intro, we’re thrown a year back where we see Paul snorting a line of cocaine in a nightclub bathroom somewhere in Niagra Falls, Canada. After insulting the wrong person in an attempt to impress his friend Faith (Bianca Melchior), he gets the guts knocked out of him, literally.
We then jump to the stateside of Niagra Falls where we’re introduced to Rob Tully (Dempsey Bryk, Heartland), a born and bred boxer with a natural talent being nurtured by his father, Reuben (real-life father Greg Bryk, The Lost Symbol), and uncle, Tommy (Noah Danby, Bitten), who both believe that his golden gloves will be the key to changing their lives forever.
Based on the novel The Fighter by Craig Davidson (Rust & Bone), who co-wrote the screenplay alongside Hunt, The Fight Machine rolls out a poeticized ferocity in its boxing matches that transforms the scenes from bloody pummels to impactful demonstrations of the inner pain these characters are working to overcome.
Rob’s journey appears to be a little more typical as far as cinematic storylines go. He’s been adorned with the burden of his family’s hopes of escaping their current lifestyle. Rob’s father, Reuben, loves his son and isn’t purposefully ignoring Rob’s needs but he’s blinded by his own failings which fuel the push for his son to do better and be better than him. Bryk delivers an impassioned performance during an exchange with his on and off-screen son. You can feel that some of the words he’s saying aren’t just lines on a page but a gutted urgency for his son to succeed within the confines of the story and beyond. “You think it’s a trap but it’s a doorway, and I want you to walk through it and never look back at my face again,” a line expressed so endearingly that it temporarily patches Rob’s inner wounds long enough to endure the next fight.
Paul is the son of a winery owner with the best clothes, cars, and a career cemented in the family business. He’s tired of being a victim of his privilege, insulated from the realities of life, and his path towards what looks like self-sabotage leads him to the world of boxing. Paul is arrogant and a little sociopathic. At first, he seems like a glutton for punishment, but as we begin to understand him, we see that he’s seeking punishment to pay for a tab that’s been covered by his father who gifted him with a pampered lifestyle. All of his failings and mistakes are easily swept under the rug, and he hates it. He wants to fall without a safety net. He wants to experience failure. He’s angry at his parents for coddling him in a way that makes him more of a liability than an asset. And the one place where he finds himself on an even playing field is in the ring. His parents see this as self-destruction, but Paul sees the chance for metamorphosis, even if only by five percent.
It wouldn’t be much of a fight film without fight scenes and Hunt crafts some gloriously bloody battles between fighters. Enjoy Hunt’s use of mixed media to visualize fight scenes, Paul’s drug trips, or his concussion after being hit a little too hard. If blood makes you queasy, you definitely need to look away a few times.
Hailing from different sides of the same Niagra Falls track, Rob and Paul are both pushing back against a life laid out for them that they didn’t choose for themselves, a rebellion that later comes to a ruthless head at the culmination of the film when they meet at The Barn — an underground fighting ring where anything goes and not everyone makes it out alive.
The Fight Machine isn’t a cinematic wonder with grandiose matches in a stadium with thousands of people cheering. It’s an authentic, gritty story that succeeds in plating the duality of characters in a ring where there are no true losers, and you leave feeling empathy for all sides.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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