As someone who has never punched anyone in this life, I love watching boxing movies. Yes, it’s a pretty mindless sport, but when every punch, jab, hook is injected with complex emotions and whatnot, it makes for an enjoyable viewing experience. I grew up watching Rocky movies (and I think they’re all great) and the sequel, Creedis damn good. by Martin Scorsese A raging bull is a masterpiece, no doubt about it. Cinderella Man, Fighterand Lefty there are some other amazing examples. Deviating from the traditional “hero’s journey” format The harder they fall, Hurricane, Million dollar babyand dare I say, Real steel. Indian films have done quite well in this subgenre Mukkabaaz, Sarpatta Parambaraiand Irudhi Sutra talking about sports politics, casteism and sexism. BoxerThe Polish Netflix movie aims to show yet another aspect of boxing, but ends up repeating every cliché you’ve ever seen.
Mitja Okornin BoxerWritten by Ivan Bezmarevic, Okorn and Lucas Coleman, the work begins in 1995, when Jedrzej reminisces about the past at his uncle Czesiek’s gym. The clocks are turned back to 1971 to show Jedrzej’s father, Edwin, fighting an admirable battle and celebrating his victory with his family. It is interrupted by two scary men who seemingly make Edwin an offer for his next fight, which he accepts. This leads to a falling out between Edwin and Czesiek, ending the former’s career as well as Jedrzej’s dreams of becoming a boxer. Edwin starts mining, and soon after he dies. Jedrzej takes this opportunity to become a boxer under Czesiek’s tutelage. He falls in love with a girl named Kasia. But then the historic crisis in Poland happens, driving the main character and his wife into poverty. That’s when Jedrzej comes up with the idea of ​​escaping to England and continuing his career there to achieve the success he can’t currently achieve in Poland. After that, it’s the standard “corruption of the soul due to greed” story you’ve seen a hundred times already.
Spoiler alert I guess; Boxer concludes the statement that in the 80s, more than a million people fled Poland to avoid death in poverty or persecution and took their chances elsewhere. It is followed by a montage of Polish athletes who made it onto the world stage. It made me wonder why the 2 hour and 32 minute movie I just watched wasn’t about them. To be clear, the authors are hardly talking about the Polish crisis. The effects of the Polish government at the time are completely ignored to tell us rags-to-riches-back-rags-to-redemption numbers. Everything after the moment Jedrzej and Kasia land in England is so predictable that you can tell where the story is going to take you with your eyes closed. And the underlying commentary is about money, drugs, loyalty, adultery, and how children repeat the mistakes of their parents. The crisis in Poland only serves as a background. The fact that the characters have escaped from Poland doesn’t matter after the point. They could have come from outer space and the plot would have been the same. And it’s annoying that the movie keeps reminding us of Krzystof Nowak’s character winning games while living through oppressive times in Poland, because that sounds like a better story than the one we’ve been subjected to.
Okorn direction in Boxer is pretty unimaginative. The boxing scenes are downright bad. Raging Bullwhich is actually a movie made in the 80s, and its fight sequences look better than anything in this 2024 movie trying to cosplay as an 80s movie. I mean, there are moments of “dirtying the lens”, but with no real emotion or half-decent character building behind it, it feels more like a gimmick than an extension of Jedrzej’s inner turmoil. There’s one reporter in the movie, and he’s sexualized to hell. Okorn’s misogynistic framing of Jedrzej and Kasia is repulsive. I know that Polish films have a reputation for being “artsy” and progressive, but I’ve seen enough contemporary Polish films to know that most mainstream films are the complete opposite. So I’m not surprised, but I’m certainly dismayed. I don’t usually complain about a movie’s runtime, but I have to question the thought process behind spending a whopping 152 minutes on this shiny piece of garbage. How come no one on the team knew there was nothing new or relevant to the story and told Okorn that maybe they should cut something and make it a lean movie so people don’t think it’s a complete waste of time?
I think the shows will be all right. I’m supposed to hate the Jedrze, and Eryk Kulm, oddly enough, makes sure that his character doesn’t become likeable for a single moment. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not. I suppose during the “honeymoon” he should have evoked some kind of empathy, but he doesn’t. Adrianna Chlebicka falls prey to the film’s terrible writing, but proves she’s talented enough to hold her own even in a testosterone-filled circus. Eryk Lubos plays Czesiek’s tragic arc effortlessly. His passion for his family and the world of boxing is truly palpable. Adam Woronowicz is made to play a pretty basic antagonist, and he gets the job done. Waleria Gorobets is supposed to look great on screen doing all sorts of naughty things and keeping her character’s journalistic side to a minimum, and she does. So kudos to him, I guess. Kwok One and Anna Fam are fine despite the limited screen time. The rest of the supporting cast is good. I don’t think there are any bad apples here. That being said, I wonder why Magdalena Walach is classified as “Jedrzej’s mother”. Okorn made a 2 hour and 32 minute movie with two other writers, but they couldn’t come up with a name for the woman? Well that’s weird.
The 2024 Olympics were held recently and there were so many stories of athletes coming from war-torn places or countries whose governments didn’t even bother to provide the financial support that sports enthusiasts needed. This shows that while we claim to be progressing as a species, we are not really showing any real signs of progress. Genocide is underway. Entire countries are going bankrupt. Domestic politics are ruining the lives of people who could have gone down in the history books under the right circumstances. And if it was done right, we could have drawn a lot of parallels between the stories Boxer and what is unfolding before our eyes right now. But since that’s not the case, I don’t recommend the film to stand a chance. I mean you pay for your Netflix account and you can choose how you want to spend your time and energy. So you can definitely use your free will to watch this (and regret it later). However, I have mentioned a bunch of other boxing movies in this article, and I guarantee you won’t regret watching them.
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