This was Mickey Rourke's pet project, a boxing picture about a pug who's over the hill and so punchdrunk he's liable to die in the ring. The film's a bit slow, its pace rather emphasised by Eric Clapton's doomy guitar score (taken on its own, moodily fine) but with individual scenes nicely realised. Rourke, Debra Feuer (the fairground girl he falls for) and Christopher Walken - the small-time smoothie who tries to suck Rourke into crime - are all well in character, and the final boxing match is not for the squeamish. There's plenty of guts in this film in more ways than one.


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