peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2010 11 04 TheBoxer

The Boxer

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Jim Sheridan always does a solid job with what he's got, and I guess he felt he had to make a movie about the Troubles, but the script for this one is a plodder. Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson play lovebirds separated by fourteen years of incarceration due to his juvenile entanglement with the IRA. Blair is on the radio advocating what became the Good Friday accords, and the IRA personage is nervous that he cannot satisfy his partisans. That was something worth exploring more deeply.

Unfortunately the whole thing does not deliver on the promise of its writers, director, stars or topic. Brian Cox (here Mr IRA) is Edward Norton's father in 25th Hour, and the climax is a creakily familiar taking out of the trash.