A travesty of film-making, this movie throws together every conceivable cliche from every film we've ever seen before about boxing, gangsters, romance, and thick but lovable scousers, and what's more compresses them all into such a space of time that its impossible to feel any narrative drive or sense that this is a real movie, rather than a simple mish-mash of individual scenes using acting offcuts from The Full Monty. The film itself looks and sounds good, thus beggaring belief that anyone looking at the script believed it could be turned into a decent product. Its depressing to think that with no film experience whatsoever, I could sit down with the script and a red pen and within an hour excise 30 cliches and 20 plot inconsistencies. Of course, having done that, there'd be 3 minutes of credits left. Its Full of unlikeable, thinly drawn characters we're supposed to root for (wise old boxing trainer, gangster moll, prostitutes with hearts of gold, , hard-but-honest hero who refuses to throw the fight) and Chicago gangsters who've risen to the top but are too stupid to foil a pack of scouse fools). Halfway through, I didn't walk out because I thought the film absolutely had to get better - there was no way it could remain at its abysmal, stinking, chancrous level. It did.
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