I like boxing movies and I like Ving Rhames, but this movie just sucks, and that's putting it mildly. The first thing and last thing that ruins it is the unbelievable, relentless, loud , horrific musical soundtrack that overwhelms the entire movie. This is a boxing movie, not a musical or an opera. EVERY fight scene, and there are plenty, is accompanied by raucous, bombastic, showtunes or amateurish 12 barre blues. Not even accompanied, completely overwhelmed. It's lucky that the actual first Liston/Patterson fight lasted just over 2 minutes, so the moron filmmaker could synch it with the music he chose. Dialogues, Liston's run-ins with police, issues with women and the mob, are all set to music, sometimes show tunes, or little jazz piano pieces, and it becomes so jarringly offensive, that half way through I gave up. These miserable songs are overlaid on everything, so it's hard to hear anything else. I had seen it years before , all of it, and wanted to see if it was as miserable as I remembered, and it was worse. I will let other reviewers point out it's hideous misrepresentations as a biopic, but I'm just doing my job by letting you know that if you know anything about the career of this remarkable fighter, or just like the sport, and the natural drama that goes along with many of it's greatest stars, avoid this mess like the plague. It's just all wrong.
Review of Phantom Punch
