Published July 26: Take a look at almost any film about boxing or sportfighting, and in almost every instance, you’ll find an underlying theme pertinent to the film’s character development through questions of “Why?” – “Why fight?”, “Why keep going?”, “Why hurt yourself?”. The best thing viewers can take away from this point on is how this aspect of the film gets broken down, further putting the pieces to the puzzle together to help answer the necessary questions, something that speaks inherently to a film like Sweet Karma and Spare Parts helmer Andrew Thomas Hunt‘s newest action drama, The Fight Machine.
Hunt adapts a screenplay based on a novel written with co-screenwriter Craig Davison, which taps deep into the innerself as we explore the arcs of two protagonists living on opposite sides of the Niagra River – Paul (Greg Hovanessian), the rich and privileged son of wealthy Canadian winery owner Jack (Ted Atherton), and Rob (Dempsey Bryk), a low/middle class boxing progeny living with his father, Reuben (Dempsey’s real-life father Greg (Bryk) and uncle, Tom (Noah Danby). Following a prologue set in Russia, we watch as Paul makes an almost instantaneous choice to become “stronger” after a violent clash with a nightclub patron over a girl, firstly wandering into a gym to begin a lifting regimen, and then stumbling one evening into a local boxing gym owned by grisled coach, Lou (Michael Ironside). Eventually, Paul manages to increase his boxing skills with lots of time and effort, although his methods are less so noble thanks to the influence of the gym’s owner, Stacey (Marc-André Boulanger) who assuredly has more secrets than he’s willing to bear than his stash of performance enhancers.
Paul’s journey is a near-polar opposite to Rob’s, whose father trains him at his own gym alongside Tom. Rob has been brought up and cultivated through boxing, and while he’s good and shows promise, what remains to be seen is his will for the sport, although that doesn’t stop him from supporting Tom who plies his trade through more uncoventional means: a barn on the edge of town that hosts an underground bareknuckle fighting circuit, which also happens to be something Lou isn’t unfamiliar with. For Lou, it is Paul’s next big step into what could be a real money-making opportunity, that is, of course, unless Paul’s increasingly self-destructive behavior gets in the way. It’s only a matter of time from then on before Paul’s own tumult ends up bringing him face to face with Rob, in a fated showdown that will force both burgeoning athletes to confront themselves in ways they least expected.
Hunt’s The Fight Machine takes an often unnerving look at what it means to define one’s self as a man for Paul and Rob. Both characters are faced with hardship, but the film definitely goes to certain places in terms of using visual ornamentation to augument certain heightened story points. We largely see this in Paul’s arc as the film is mostly centric on him in parallel to Rob’s; There’s a sequence when Paul is on a bender and we get some green screen sequences between him at a supermarket and driving on a road, as well as an introspective animated sequence in which he beats up a row of opponents. It definitely puts emphasis on the extreme circumstances Paul is faced with compared to Rob and his own troubles, and we begin to see that even more in how it affects Lou’s own willingness to keep training him.
The dichotomy continues over on Rob’s end of the story, where he tends to dabble in poetry with the help of a friend and neighbor, Katie (Sana Asad). There’s clearly a romantic insinuation that falls short whenever Katie tries to initiate at times, thanks in part to a combination of bad timing and Rob’s own cold feet. Aside from all this, we watch as Rob’s albeit existence, made comfortable with the bond he shares with Tom to help balance out the father/son paradigm, is brought to a standstill when things take a near-fatal turn. It is at this juncture when, for the first time, we see Rob’s own emotional endurance tested when a friend of Katie’s decides to goad him in a personal dispute over Rob’s boxing and his family’s failed prospects in the sport, nearly pushing him to the brink of violence.
Hovenessian and Byrk are outstanding as the film’s converging leads of The Fight Machine, with both actors exuding moments of pure depth and vulnerability as the film plays out between their supporting counterparts. One favorite scene I have is when Paul comes home after a terrible accident, bloodied and still confronted by his parents, and all Paul can do is vent the frustrations he’s grown with his sheltered and protected life, and visibly straining over a need to destroy himself in order to rebuild himself into the man he needs to be. Another scene is in Rob’s home, which stands exemplary of the chemistry he shares with Tom, while Reuben sits at the kitchen table stressed over Tom’s next barn fight.
I will also go as far as to say that the film certainly delves just a little bit into the salacious and controversial during Paul’s sequencing of events – particularly in two key moments that are crucial to his own development in the film on the matters of sex and sexuality. Those scenes are separate and involve the characters of Stacey, and a female character Paul gets intimate with later in the film, and that’s all I’ll say about that. Fans of Ironside can especially look forward to some promising moments from him opposite Hovenessian as Paul’s beleagured mentor, forced to watch as his mentee punishes himself almost to the brink of death, if not severe injury.
The stories of both Paul and Rob are told with excellent pacing and balance amid the drama and the action, and a vision that culminates later in the film’s second half when the two twenty-somethings finally meet in the moments leading up to their definitive fight finale. The action sequences, choreographed by Wayne Wells, are fantastic in their execution, packed with moments of pure, bloody, and bone-crunching brutality, a tone of the violence that ultimately speaks to Rob in a climatic post-fight moment for his character that is heartfelt, as well as horrific and gut-wrenching.
The illegal underground fight game and, more importantly, questions of “winning” and “losing” are secondhand to what Hunt aims for in The Fight Machine. Instead, the film is a bareknuckle action drama that compels you to observe the meatgrinder-like challenges of young male adulthood in a world, one perhaps in which whether or not you really feel alive at the end of it all, is the only real question that begs asking. It’s an issue Hunt meets head-on in The Fight Machine with provocative, mature savage, and even gruesome imagery and a message that hits as hard as every punch in this film that counts.
The Fight Machine screens for Fantasia Festival this year on July 27 at 6:45pm and July 29 at 1:00pm at the Salle J.A. de Sève cinema in Montreal.