The film begins in black and white, going for a documentary feel, and then cuts to Hayato, a boxer with a remarkable past. While in the middle of a winning match, he doesn’t have the motivation to continue fighting and later on also, does retire from the sport. The man ends up heavily abandoning his family, finds himself living alone in a small space with his dog, and was living life like a messy slob. Later on, if we move towards the middle of this plot, we see Hayato looking for Tenma at a gym since he is a boxer.
But if we pull the curtains back a little and take a glance at Hayato’s past, he works alongside Tenma at a car junkyard. Over there, his brother dies due to unfortunate circumstances, and that’s when the beef started brewing. But despite all this, Tenma still has the desire to have MMA training by Hayato, of course, ignoring the pain his legs endured throughout his career. To cut a long story short, their working relationship is anything but simple, and when we add Hayato’s daughter into the mix, it complicates things tenfold.
Shuji Terayama’s film can be divided into three key sections and the first and least significant of these is the partly documentary aspect in which he attempts to tell the sad narratives of a group of once famous Japanese boxers and from the actual fights and later adding them as cameos in the final bout of the movie. The second axis is the narrative of Hayato, and Terayama’s masterful retention of the reason for subsequently quitting, almost to the last bookend of the film, where he goes out with flair, delivering as close to violence as drama can get which is most likely the best part of the movie. Whether it’s the fact he’s still being chased by his ex-wife or the fact he’s quite active and fit, all these compound the anomaly, an anomaly which serves the plot quite nicely.
Clearly, Tenma is the third man who seems to be an even bigger loser than Hayato, especially considering the death of his colleague is quite unreasonable while him having a bad leg and still wanting to box makes him somewhat of an anti-hero. The drama does start when the two arcs come together which depicts the fighting scenes in a sense that may be less subtle, but will definitely change the tone of the movie. Simultaneously, the two losers who should be enemies but end up being comrades of sorts works quite well which, in turn, explains Hayato’s willingness to aid his brother’s murderer for more or less the same reasons that made him help in the first place. This is the most interesting part in the plot, and Terayama is able to do it in a reasonable manner in which he has an indirect approach.
However, it can be argued that the film does not really pack any sort of punch, or perhaps even worse it appears to be a distance away from the series of events, and we see a relationship between the two characters evolving into trainer and trainee as well as a relationship between the two characters and one of them’ daughter. All of that coined ‘Rocky’ caricatures a bit to doing with the running drills and the fighting at the end. Rather Hayato’s last contest truly comes off in a Socratic way, but Terayama is able to ameliorate that by drawing tension between the two characters. Having said that, it should be noted that Hayato’s perspective alone, and the character of the two alone amends the dismal feeling that would have otherwise been present after viewing this movie.
It has to be said that the realism of the fights works rather well in this instance however the DP Tatsuo, rather Suzuki captures all of the glamorous realism and the ugliness but the atmosphere of the neighborhood of low lives characters is incredibly disappointing. Fumio Soda’s instinctive approach to editing ensures quick pacing which is consistent with the essence of the storyline while Terayama experiments in this particular case it is the introduction of document style sequences makes a good attempt although there has been an unusual variance on the norm of provisions.
Bunta Sugawara as Hayato, who will play the role of the brawler as he typically does, pulls off the more emotional side of the character rather convincingly. On the other hand, Kentaro Shimizu is also appealing in his rather unexpected forthrightness, their sizzling chemistry is among the best things about the movie.
‘The Boxer’ has nothing seriously wrong with it and the fact also that the depiction of the base elements of the boxing fraternity is quite interesting. But the fact that the film is missing some wow factor and that there are a lot of scenes that are hard to comprehend why they exist, does lower its quality, making it a title that could have been better.
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