Matt Damon is a law student, loyal to a childhood pal (Edward Norton). They’re poker players, but guided by law professor Martin Landau and gal with the heart of gold Gretchen Moll (all grown up in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire), Damon tries to walk the straight and narrow.

But just when he thinks he’s out, he’s pulled back in! Norton gets indebted to a brutal, track suit wearing Russian mobster (John Malkovich) and he needs Damon to square him.

I’m a huge fan of Matt Damon, and consider him wildly underappreciated.  He’s the engine of The Talented Mr. Ripley and his villain in The Departed is the most interesting and challenging character in the picture.  His grieving fathers in both Syriana and Contagion are deeply moving, as is his shell-shocked soldier in Courage Under Fire.  I winced when I heard he was cast in the Glen Campbell role for The Coen Brothers’ True Grit, but I don’t know why.  He was the perfect blend of haughty and out-of-his-depth. 

But make him the hero and the feeling of somnabulence soon washes over you.  His Good Will Hunting was the most boring of his pals, Bagger Vance moved golf on film from tiresome to interminable, his Jason Bourne had you stifling yawns even while he was snapping necks, and Eastwood’s Invictus showed he could be pedestrian with a South African accent. 

Damon is a terrible choice for the hero in this picture.  He’s dull, knows it, and eventually, just gives up.  Damon’s blah performance is underscored by the fact that all the other characters are oozing and sweating and doing noir tough.   

Thank God for Malkovich. He’s the only thing that save this hackneyed tripe, and the reason for both stars.

Minsk?

Sylvester Stallone wrote this gem and wisely insisted on starring (possible replacing, if you can imagine, Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds or Robert Redford), leading to many more Rocky movies, and some Rambos, and a dozen other mumbling portrayals.  Say what you will about what it spawned, but Rocky is near flawless.

Rocky is a busted up club fighter living in the bleak hell that is mid 70s Philadelphia. He’s a sweet guy, but he is an admitted bum, getting a fight every few weeks and paying the rent by collecting for a local loan shark. We meet Rocky after a sixth round knockout of another bum nets him $40, and he’s just been unceremoniously evicted from his gym by its manager, Burgess Meredith. His best friend is a meat packing cretin (Burt Young) who lives with his paralyzingly shy sister (Talia Shire), who Rocky is sweet on. Rocky’s fortunes change, however, when the champion, a Muhammad Ali figure named Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), has a ranked contender drop out from a well-promoted fight. Creed fixes on a gimmick – give a nobody – the “EYE-talion Stallion” – a shot at the title.

This is often heralded as the quintessential boxing movie, but boxing is secondary to a moving, beautiful love story between Shire and Stallone, and the portrayal of a Philadelphia so cruel and cold that Rocky seems like its only validation.

Shire is so withdrawn, a character taunts Rocky, suggesting she is “retarded.” She is not, but she is painfully muted. Rocky’s persistence, and the innate sweetness in him, pulls her out. The scenes of their first encounters, and particularly, the scene where he takes her on a first date, are realistic, poignant and heart wrenching. As they come together, you can see that each provides the other a confidence and support they’d never known. Stallone and Shire share a haunting chemistry of losers, and their story really is the movie.

As is the city. Director John Avildsen uses the gritty corners and grimy haunts of poor and working class Philly and the verisimilitude contributes heavily to the drama. Rocky lives in a hell, where folks sit on the cold streets, trash is strewn everywhere, and it is not enough to ignore someone – you must abuse them. So, Rocky’s loan shark boss has a driver who mocks Rocky mercilessly. When Rocky tries to tell a neighborhood girl to get off the streets or she’ll get a “rep,” she responds, “Screw you, creepo” and when he is kicked out of his gym, Burgess Meredith humiliates him publicly.

Of course, when Rocky gets his shot, Meredith, hat in hand, comes to help. The result is one of the most beautiful scenes in Hollywood history:

The picture received 10 Oscar nominations, including ones for Stallone, Shire and Meredith, and it deservedly won Best Picture.

The only fault is the fight itself, which is hampered by fighters who look buff and have some moves (Weathers simulates a nice stinging jab), but unrealistically degenerates into a clumsy brawl. While Avildsen does the best he can with the budget (a mere $1 million shot in less than a month), his interspersing of stock arena footage cannot save the fact that the Rocky-Apollo fight looks very small indeed, and you can see empty seats in the background of various shots of the fighters.  Given the budget and the quick pace of filming, these weaknesses are easily overlooked.