The story boxing legend Vinny Pazienza is one that all boxing fans are familiar with. One moment, he was holding a boxing championship belt being adored by screaming fans. The next, he was lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life. Pazienza’s life isn’t one like any other boxers in the trade, but it is definitely one worth telling.
Directed by Ben Younger, “Bleed for This,” released Friday, is a moving biopic retelling the comeback of legendary boxer Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza (Miles Teller). At the top of his game, Pazienza lets his arrogance get the best of him, and his late-night tendency to gamble leads him to his third loss in a row. Desperate to fight the notion that he should just throw in the towel — a proposition offered by his own manager — Pazienza turns to trainer Kevin Rooney (Aaron Eckhart) to whip him back into fighting shape. Under Rooney’s training regiment, Pazienza goes on to become junior middleweight champion.
However, Pazienza’s life takes a turn for the worse after a devastating car accident. Sustaining serious injuries that just barely damaged his spinal cord, Pazienza opted to avoid the spinal fusion that would have guaranteed his ability to walk again and instead wore a halo ring.
This procedure consisted of securing the head between a metal ring with metal screws, then attaching the ring to a vest to hold the head in place while the spine healed on its own. After months of recovery and training, The Pazmanian Devil reached his former level of glory, subsequently winning several more titles and victories since the accident that could have ended his career and life itself.
The movie meets the high expectations of conveying the inspirational story of the boxing great. Aside from the lack of motivational music in the same vein as “Rocky Balboa,” Pazienza’s transition from incapacitated man to boxing champion had such poignancy to prompt any glassy-eyed, impressionable person to chase their dreams.
The film had a nice balance in dramatics without overwhelmingly portraying Pazienza’s recovery like biopics sometimes do through a dedication to entertain that causes a severe exaggeration of events. “Bleed for This” employed very little of such embroidery, oftentimes relying on the simplicity of the story itself to provoke emotion in the audience.
The plotline isn’t one unfamiliar to audiences, as it stays true to the extensive formulaic timeline of all comeback narratives: a character faces a great deal of adversity and inordinately overcomes obstacles in their way to achieve their previous status of success. Nonetheless, the story is humbled by the emphasis on Pazienza’s family life.
Younger could have easily focused the plotline around Pazienza’s impressive boxing career and his exceptional recovery, but goes a step further and offers the audience an inside look on Pazianza’s Italian-American family back home in Rhode Island instead.
Prior to the devastating accident, scenes of Pazienza’s fights were split between being at the event itself to showing his family’s distraught faces as they watched the game on their television miles away from the match’s venue, making for a more emotional connection between the audience and Pazienza.
Shedding light on this side of the boxer’s life equated the incredible Pazmanian Devil to any regular person facing problems in their life, suggesting the idea that it is possible to accomplish what you believe in if you put in the right amount of work. After all, if a man can go from possibly never walking again to winning a boxing world championship, anything seems possible.
Despite its seemingly cliché screenplay, Younger pulls off quite a memorable storyline in the crowd of comparable comeback films. Unique outlooks on the life story coupled with characterizing it with prime casting, “Bleed for This” is a movie that captures the true essence of the struggle of hitting rock bottom and climbing your way back to the top.
