Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
Directed by Ralph Nelson
After suffering a brutal defeat and being told he can no longer fight, 37-year-old, scar-ridden prizefighter Louis 'Mountain' Rivera struggles to find a new direction in life.
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What critics compared Requiem for a Heavyweight to
Eastwood has crafted a boxing movie that holds more akin to the 1956 Paul Newman starrer, “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” or “Requiem For A Heavyweight” than the “Rocky” franchise, to which it is most compared.
The screenplay by Kurt Sutter, creator of TV’s Sons of Anarchy, offers little that we haven’t already seen in the Rocky saga, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby, and dozens of lesser boxing dramas.
We’ve seen it many times before, in everything from Champion to Requiem for a Heavyweight, but what makes this one different is the dedication, commitment and sincerity the star brings to every aspect of the role.
Antoine Fuqua's latest is a rote, by-the-numbers sports melodrama that ultimately lacks the courage of its convictions, meaning that although it's shooting for Rocky and Requiem for a Heavyweight, it ends up as Real Steel.
Written by Kurt Sutter ( Sons of Anarchy ) and directed by Antoine Fuqua ( Training Day ), Southpaw has some stiff competition in the boxing-film subgenre: Rocky , Raging Bull , Million Dollar Baby , The Fighter , Cinderella Man , Requiem for a Heavyweight (and coming in the near future are Bleed for This, Creed , and Hands of Stone).
Marty was followed by adaptations of two other Chayefsky dramas, The Bachelor Party (1957) and Middle of the Night (1959), as well as adaptations of TV dramas by Rod Serling (1956’s Patterns and 1962’s Requiem for a Heavyweight) and J. P. Miller (1959’s The Rabbit Trap and 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses).
So in that sense, Rocky, The Wrestler, Fat City, Cinderella Man, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and even a Mike Tyson documentary are all more or less the same.