Cinema: Short Takes: The Boxer

A critic of mild demeanor (aren't we all?) sat in a screening room, sucking on a Ricola as he watched The Boxer, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Danny Flynn, a Belfast prize fighter unjustly jailed on a bombing rap, and Emily Watson as the girl he left behind. The critic dutifully tabulated each blunt plot point, each refried cliche ("I'm not a killer, Maggie, but this place makes me want to kill"). And yet, when Danny's nemesis did something monstrously rotten, the critic was so enraged by the dastardly act that he had to stop himself from spitting his candy at the screen. Extraordinary how potent cheap movies are.

The mass audience has paid scant attention to films about the Irish Troubles, but this one may find friends precisely because it renounces political nuance for emotional bullying and old Hollywood-style blarney. The movie's forebears are '30s Warner Bros. melodramas like Kid Galahad (a fighter and his trainer KO the crooks) and Angels with Dirty Faces (the Dead End Kids learn who's the real tough guy). The Boxer could even be a Going My Way without priests--it's that hokey.

Jim Sheridan, the director and co-writer here, who also worked with Day-Lewis on My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, may have figured that subtlety has no place in a story about the lunatic fervor of Irish extremist politics. Or maybe he figured his cast could make the gritty fantasy plausible. Day-Lewis very nearly does. His laser stare and world-class rope skipping, his very devotion to the project, elevate the film to check-it-out status and get the crowd cheering for him and his quest. Even in a slim tale like The Boxer, Day-Lewis is the serious-actor, movie-star goods.

--By Richard Corliss