Kid Snow Review – Boxing period drama set in the Australian outback packs a punch

Tent boxing is an interesting subject for film: a now-defunct Australian pastime, placed on top of a Venn diagram between sporting event and circus. Entourage fighters perform inexpensive shows abroad.

It’s at the center of director Paul Goldman’s ’70s-set drama Kid Snow, whose scruffy title character – played by Billy Howle – is a bottomless Irish boxer who’s become part of this world and works in a show run by his brother Rory. Tom Bateman).

In the tradition of boxing movies, the main character gets a chance to settle old scores when he is offered a fight with the man – now the Commonwealth champion – who lost on one fateful, tragedy-filled night a decade ago.

Kid is the underdog who has to prove himself by rising to the challenge and putting everything on the line. This again signals a hard-working comeback story – unfortunately this one is told rather flatly and unimaginatively, with dramatic intrigue here and there.

Vividly capturing the noise and spectacle of tent boxing and its cultural context would have brought a bit of atmosphere and excitement, but both as a sports film and as a period drama, the film feels only partially rendered, burdened by well-worn genre tropes. comes fully to life as a time-capsule vision of an outdated Australian pastime.

The film opens like Martin Scorsese’s oft-imitated but rarely matched masterpiece Raging Bull, with elegantly framed slow-motion shots of the protagonist prancing around in a ring, emphasizing body movement and physicality over the roar of the crowd. In fact, the crowd is practically invisible, the ring is covered in a fog-like mist that obscures the background, looking elegantly smoky and on a practical level, reducing the need for accessories or even a set that resembles a sports venue. You can get away with this trick once, especially when the audience is still getting used to the film, but when Goldman uses it again on the big screen in the final act, it looks pretty clearly like a cost-saving technique.

After losing a major battle in the prologue, tragedy strikes when a wrecked kid crashes his car, killing his father (John Brumpton) and permanently injuring his brother. The story jumps forward ten years, Kid’s dreams are shattered until he gets the chance to participate in the aforementioned rematch. So the main character begins training – though the film feels strangely only half-committed to capturing his preparation for the big fight, even though it’s central to the premise.

More dramatic is Kid’s relationship with single mother Sunny (Phoebe Tonkin), who joins the group as a dancer. Like most characters in the film, he has a dark past that drips through regret-tinged monologues. Other supporting characters include indigenous boxers Lizard (Hunter Page-Lochard) and Lovely (Mark Coles Smith), who get enough screen time but feel oddly underdeveloped, with little idea of ​​what they stand for or what they’re motivated by. However, Kid and Sunny are easy to read: both are burdened by the past, are looking for a way out and are open to the possibility of love.

Tonkin brings a tired, baggy-eyed melancholy that’s quite interesting; you can feel him pushing the drama towards a heavier and more atmospheric key. Howle is also strong in the role of the same name, and he has a fluffy, week-unvisited energy that feels genuine and alive. But I never felt a strong emotional connection with him, and the drama never gets around. The dialogue also feels very sophisticated, bordering on laborious. There are also issues with pace and energy: the structure drifts and you don’t get a strong sense that the drama is escalating and the stakes are rising.

Kid Snow is a little more natural than 2008’s The Tender Hook, set in 1920s Sydney and starring Hugo Weaving as a gangster-like fight organizer and Matthew Le Nevez as an eager upstart. That film had a bigger budget and thus more impressive period details, but it lacked grit and glamour, even more the smell of mothballs. The door is open for someone to make a big Australian boxing season drama.