Gritty, real, the uplifting story of a blue collar hero. Lowell Massachusetts is the real setting for this movie, and its clapboard row houses and deserted mills are punctuated with corner stores and bars. This is where "Irish" Mickey Ward made his rise to boxing immortality. Plagued by personal demons and a oft misguided family including half brother Dickey Ecklund Ward, a once up and coming boxer who was known as "the pride of Lowell" and who's claim to fame is having knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. Ecklund now battles with drug addiction and criminal activity while making a poor attempt to act as brother Mickeys trainer. This is a real life Rocky, a movie to lift you up out of your seat and make you feel alive.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Painfully boring
12 January 2011
This movie had the potential to be something better, but I found it painfully boring to try to sit through. It starts slow, the plot is weak and as others have said, there are gaps of needed information left empty. If you want a good supernatural thriller or psychological mind screw, this ain't it. The characters are weak and plastic, the cinematography has a few quality moments but these could be condensed into a 30 second clip. The storyline seems put together loosely and leaves one wondering if the screenplay never left the rough draft stage of its production. Save yourself your money and use the hour and a half you could spend watching this and do something else. To call this movie B grade is an insult to B grade movies.
Dear Mr. Gacy
(2010)
an uneasy journey
12 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I enjoy true crime but find that most movies fall far short from their goal. Dear Mr. Gacy is an uneasy, unsettling ride into the interactions of John Wayne Gacy and Moss, a young college student who sets out to use Gacy as his subject for a term paper. It begins innocently enough with a letter, the response from the killer strange but not overly so, then the roller coaster takes the plunge and there is no turning back. The movie is psychological more than physical, although there are a few brief violent scenes, one with Gacy and the only known victim to ever escape and survive. The supporting characters are well defined and seem to fit well into the storyline. This is not a shiny Criminal Minds type of show, the cinematography is dark and overall brooding, there is a mirror scene that is recalls Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver that if true is OK, but if added with artistic license seems a bit over the top. The part of Gacy is played well with a believability that can at times make the viewer uneasy.
Tell Your Friends