Howard Winstone (Stuart Brennan) grew up in the quiet Welsh town of Merthyr Tydfil, suffering a horrific injury in his late teens that cost him most of the digits on his right hand and looked likely to put paid to his aspirations to be a professional boxer. But he met Eddie Thomas (John Noble) who trained him and encouraged him, until he eventually fought for the WBC world featherweight title.
*****
I confess to having known nothing of Howard Winstone before sitting down to watch Risen, though it certainly is a compelling story. He suffered one of those “comes out of nowhere” industrial accidents that should have rendered a professional boxing career impossible, so painful would hitting an opponent with nothing but stumps for fingers have been, yet box he did and exceedingly well. His professional record of 61 wins from 67 bouts is impressive enough, without taking account of the fact that he was at times almost fighting one-handed.
So then, this is a story with as much dramatic potential as any other boxing drama or biopic, which makes it all the more frustrating that the finished article falls so flat. The blame for this state of affairs must sadly fall on all concerned, with John Noble (TV’s Fringe, The Lord of the Rings) possibly the only one getting away with his reputation intact. Brennan is a pretty good likeness for Winstone and gives a good account of himself in the fight sequences, but he is sadly out of his depth (punching above his weight?) when it comes to the dramatic heavy-lifting, struggling to effectively convey the emotional tensions, frustrations and pain of his character.
The boxing scenes themselves, though well-staged in terms of putting us into the action (Ali-style “in the thick of it” camera work abounds) show all too obvious signs of budget limitations, with anyone beyond the first row of the crowd plunged into darkness so as to avoid having to gather large numbers of extras for fights that took place in football stadia and large arenas. The final showdown, as Winstone takes on Mitsunori Seki for the WBC title, doesn’t pull its punches, with many blows clearly being landed for real, but it is not enough to cover the film’s other shortcomings.
Too many of the actors are unable to believably deliver their lines, with the assortment of fight promoters most conspicuously at fault here. Another irritating point is the way the director had to keep filming around Brennan’s very much uninjured right hand. Of course you can’t expect the casting director to track down an actor who is magically missing the correct fingers, nor are Forrest Gump-style special effects within the reach of film-maker’s of means this modest, but when most scenes involve Brennan very noticeably and awkwardly keeping his right hand out of shot, or draping a coat or towel over it, it starts to become an unwelcome distraction, off-balancing the performance as Brennan seem to have half an eye in every scene on whether his hand is in shot.
It is, nonetheless, a film of powerful moments and admirably short on sentimentality and cliché. It could do with being a good twenty minutes shorter and if they could have afforded a few more extras for the fight scenes and had a few quid to put towards some better actors, then the whole film would no doubt have had a good deal more impact. A shame then, as this true-life story deserved better treatment.
Risen spent the early part of the year on the film festival circuit and is out in UK cinemas now, on a limited release, before coming out on DVD at the end of May.
[Rating:1.5/5]
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zd4x_98WHI’]
