A thirtyish professional boxer named “Irish Mike” Flannigan (Michael Pitt), on the mend from an auto accident injury and a disappointing relationship, is preparing for an important bout—to reclaim the middleweight title he lost a few years earlier.
Day of the Fight, one of the most straightforward, old-fashioned character studies on the market, is a terse chronological record of the day leading up to Irish Mike’s big night at Madison Square Garden. Writer-director Jack Huston’s drama follows the fighter as he limbers up in his drab Brooklyn apartment and then makes the rounds, dropping in on the people in his life, making amends, sometimes connecting with characters on the street, in effect saying goodbye, just in case this is his last go-round.
With a title borrowed from a 1951 Stanley Kubrick short documentary, debut filmmaker Huston’s scenario is a familiar one, reminiscent of a formulaic old Hollywood “B” movie, minus the excessively corny heart-tug caricatures but fully equipped with 1940s-Warner-Bros.-style faces and situations. Maybe that’s because Jack Huston is one of those Hustons.
Jack’s great-grandfather, actor Walter (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) was the father of the illustrious John (director of The Maltese Falcon, character actor supreme in Chinatown). And so Jack’s father, actor Tony Huston, John’s son, puts the UK native Jack into the same family tree as Jack’s aunt and uncle, fellow thespians Anjelica and Danny. Jack is an actor (American Hustle) as well as a director.
The combination of boxing and the name Huston is a natural cinematic parlay—no matter how skimpy the narrative. Irish Mike’s low-key, ultra-realistic adventure is the stuff of mundane big-city poetry, humble yet tinged with glory. Everything leads up to the big fight. Will he win, or lose? Somehow along the way the actual outcome, the main event, falls by the wayside and the film, slight as it is, turns inward into a meaningful parade of types and the stories attached to them. Irish Mike, who’s sick in spite of his daily workouts, is a reluctant hero in search of peace of mind.
Just by dint of its cast list, Day of the Fight is a pretty remarkable little movie. Mikey’s corner man and trainer, Stevie, is played by Ron Perlman, who fits the image of a professor of fistic science so aptly he almost doesn’t need dialogue—maybe that’s why Huston didn’t give him much. Mikey’s uncle (Steve Buscemi) is also a man of few words, and his mug fits the milieu. But the most prominent character part in the film belongs to someone who can’t manage a single word. Joe Pesci, in the role of Mike’s seriously debilitated father, dominates the scene in which Mike visits him at the senior home so completely, it’s one of the most moving moments in the film, a dab of minimalism from an actor notorious for his grandiosity.
For all its supporting-actor firepower, the soul of Irish Mike’s heartfelt odyssey from Brooklyn to the Garden belongs to Mike’s interaction with his ex, Jesssica (an expressive Nicolette Robinson), a combination bartender/cocktail lounge vocalist. Her sad-memory resentments against the fighter show signs of melting in every scene she’s in. Jessica’s song, “If I Ever Lost You,” is dubbed on the soundtrack by veteran high-pitched crooner Pesci, another link in the film’s seemingly endless chain of references.
Actor Pitt deserves special notice. Remembered best for his sinister/androgynous parts in such cult items as Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the Boardwalk Empire series and Funny Games, the 43-year-old actor’s transformation into beat-up, beat-out slugger Irish Mike is nothing less than astonishing. How many boxing title contenders are chain smokers who suffer from a brain aneurysm? Never mind that Pitt seems to be borrowing from the Marlon Brando/Tom Hardy scrapbook of tender-hearted tough guys. His Irish Mike is a notable comeback, keyed by the character’s exciting dustup in the Garden. Day of the Fight may be modest, but it delivers.
Now playing at the AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco.
