What ever happened to genre movies? Hollywood thrived on westerns, musicals, gangster stories, hospital dramas, whodunits and the like until television consumed almost every category. The Day of the Fight isn’t trying to rewrite the playbook. It’s a boxing picture, and it hits most of the notes we anticipate…but that’s what makes it so satisfying. It gives us what we expect from a boxing movie. As the executive says to forlorn screenwriter Barton Fink, “What do you need—a road map?”
Our hero (a perfectly-cast Michael C. Pitt) has just been sprung from prison after twenty long years. Upon his release, he is driven to make amends to people he was closest to, even those who hurt him—like his father (Joe Pesci), now living in a nursing home and unable to speak. And as he makes his first tentative steps back into society, he takes on his first prizefight.
The screenplay doesn’t break new ground but it is well-structured and sincere. We feel for Pitt’s character, who is trying to do the right thing. He keeps his head down and is grateful to have someone important in his corner—his trainer (Ron Perlman), who hasn’t ever given up on him.
The Day of the Fight marks the writing and directing debut of actor Jack Huston, and it’s a film he canpoint to with pride. And if it isn’t quite as impressive as his grandfather’s launchpad, The Maltese Falcon (1941), it’s still a creditable and entertaining genre piece. And its tyro writer-director made the right call before a frame of film was exposed: he shot it in black & white.