I've never really been a big social media user, and the more time that passes, the less appeal I find in it, but there was a brief period a few years back when I even joined Instagram. My main reason for doing this was to follow various celebrities that I like and marvel at the delightful imagery they oft choose to share with us. One such celeb I followed was Halle Berry because... well, she's really hot and she went through a phase of posting some rather saucy pics such as this one (snigger!), but for much of the time I followed her, she was mainly posting pics and vids of her doing hardcore workouts and sparring sessions in MMA-type gear. I was slightly startled by this until I realised it might be for a film. A short period of research later and I found that it was indeed for a film, her directorial debut, no less, and in it she would be playing... an MMA fighter - gadzooks! Suffice to say, being something of a fan of both Halle Berry and fighty films, I was rather looking forward to it.
It seemed to take an age to arrive, probably due to the pandemic, but it did eventually appear on Netflix (for it is a Netflix original). Was it worth the wait? I'll answer that later but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. Ms. Berry stars as Jackie Justice who has been retired since forfeiting a major fight four years earlier. She now lives in Newark where she barely scrapes by as a housecleaner. That combined with an abusive and unsympathetic boyfriend/manager and uncaring mother leaves her relying on alcohol to get her through the days. As if that wasn't enough, she gets a six year old boy, Manny (Boyd Jr), dumped on her after the ex-husband she left the child with was gunned down, leaving Manny mute due to the trauma.
Suffice to say, it's certainly not the most upbeat film I've ever seen! It's not a great film if you're here for fighty reasons either. That's not to say the fight scenes aren't any good - they are, as far as I can tell, very realistic - it's just that there aren't many of them. Jackie does inevitably hit the comeback trail though, after an encounter with an MMA official known as Immaculate (Anderson) results in her getting a couple of trainers in Buddhakan and Pops (Atim and Henderson) as well as a title shot against Lucia 'Lady Killer' Chavez (Shevchenko). It may sound like a female MMA version of Rocky, and there are a few parallels, but it has nowhere near the impact of that classic, as you might imagine. Maybe it's unfair to compare them at all.
There are some good performances though, particularly from Berry who shows promise behind the camera and is as good as she has ever been in front of it. The condition she managed to get herself in is remarkable (and at the age of 54, let's not forget - see this pic from her social media). I'm guessing this was a real passion project for her to go through all that, and the result is very impressive from that point of view. It's a largely downbeat film though, about a good but down-on-her-luck woman surrounded by exploitive, neglectful people, and it's a little cliched in its 'spirit triumphs over adversity' angle. There's lots of drama, a little romance, and a couple of fights, but unfortunately it only really excels at the few fights, and it's probably not one I'll watch again if I'm honest. Still, it was a hell of job by the ageless Berry - extra point just for that! Maybe even I can lose my spare tyre...
No comments:
Post a Comment