The dark romance of boxing movies gets dusted off and sentimentalized anew in the New York-set drama “Day of the Fight,” actor Jack Huston’s writing and directing debut. Sometimes lumbering though always well-intentioned, it’s an ode to tales of lovable, scrappy galoots who keep a glint in their pummeled eyes. You’d be surprised how far that kind of low-hum redemption energy can still carry a movie, even one as throwback-engineered as this.
It stars Michael Pitt, too, another signal of the comeback generosity being seeded here, since the actor, who’s had off-screen troubles, has felt absent from the industry that once anointed him an up-and-comer. That Huston thought of his old “Boardwalk Empire” co-star for the role of down-and-out middleweight legend “Irish” Mike Flannigan instead of playing it himself feels like a gift of sorts and Pitt, his once effortlessly smoldering, fashion-spread pout having settled into a heavy-lidded, bruised pucker, treats the opportunity as such. He embodies the part with mended-wing gratitude.
Huston, meanwhile, introduces Pitt’s Mike as if already a last-chance icon, waking up in his dingy but silhouette-friendly apartment — Peter Simonite’s monochrome cinematography already working overtime — to do some moody wee-hours training and tend to his cat, with “Crucify Your Mind” from forgotten troubadour Rodriguez as the sequence’s needle drop (followed soon after by a cut from another lost artist, ’60s folkie Jackson Frank).
A onetime world champion but now a disgraced ex-con after a drunk-driving incident that killed a boy, Mike does have a lucky break ahead: an undercard match that night at Madison Square Garden that could revive his fortunes. But he also hocks a family ring to put everything he owns on his poor odds to win, which seems reckless. Maybe it has something to do with those brief flashbacks — a worrisome doctor’s visit and moments with a daughter who he hasn’t been around much for.
He starts walking around the city, reconnecting with loved ones on what smacks of a forgiveness tour. At the shipyard with his uncle (Steve Buscemi), Mike talks about his late mom — also the subject of flashbacks and unresolved pain. At the gym, his crusty manager (Ron Perlman) tries to get him to focus on the bout, but from there it’s to the confessional with a friend-turned-priest (John Magaro), then to the apartment of his ex-wife (Nicolette Robinson), where she softens her bitterness toward him. Last up before showtime in the ring, he heads to an old-age home and a teary one-way plea for answers from an abusive father (Joe Pesci) who can’t speak anymore.
The fight is the fight. It brings some needed energy yet has only one possible outcome. It’s one thing to know where a story is headed — that doesn’t preclude a movie from generating plenty of emotional stakes. But “Day of the Fight,” dipped in that rueful black-and-white and sporting an aggressively plaintive song score (including a melancholy track from one of Pesci’s own crooner albums), is too enamored with its underdog’s unmistakable destiny to make the best use of its urban milieu and an elite-tier cast, most of whom seem more like guest stars than characters. Pitt, who gets to pour out everything Mike is feeling, acquits this imbalance well enough, but in any drama worth its coulda-been-a-contender salt, he shouldn’t have to.
You feel sad for the sincerity in “Day of the Fight” that never really intensifies. Huston’s heart is certainly in the right place and the narrative corner he’s written for Mike to fight his way out of isn’t an untenable one for a pugilist melodrama. But this soft-jab tragedy never finds the depth of expression to become a truly layered tale about choices, regrets and what we do with the rounds we have left.
