The Bleeder review: A very gentle and affectionate portrait of a fighter

Liev Schreiber plays New Jersey boxing legend Chuck Wepner, who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali in 1975

Philippe Falardeau, 101 mins, starring: Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Elisabeth Moss, Ron Perlman

The boxing movie has been pounded nearly to death by Hollywood. There have been countless tales about contenders and champs whose lives have fallen apart outside the ring. It might seem that any film about fighters is condemned nowadays to be an exercise in nostalgia and pastiche.

At first glance, The Bleeder doesn’t appear to have a shred of originality. This is yet another yarn about a heavyweight fighter getting his comeuppance outside the ring. It is based on the true story of Chuck Wepner, who surprised everyone, not least himself, by going 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali in 1975 - and whose heroics directly inspired Sylvester Stallone to make Rocky.

In fact, in its own sly way, the film (scripted by Jeff Feuerzeig and Jerry Stahl), introduces a few clever new moves into the genre. Taking its lead from its shambling hero, this is a likeable and good natured film with an endearing sense of mischief. Schreiber, a classical actor as well as a Hollywood star, doesn’t seem the obvious choice to play a New Jersey bum like Wepner but he gives a genial, heartwarming performance.

Wepner was nicknamed the “Bleeder” because when he was cut in the ring, the red stuff gushed. (The press dubbed him Bayonne's “one man blood bank.”) He was the quintessential journeyman, a fighter who liked to put on a show and whose strategy consisted mainly of walking into his opponent’s punches and throwing a few of his own on the way.

The film evokes Wepner’s early 1970s heyday in affectionate and comic fashion. There’s lot of pounding disco music on the soundtrack as well as a Scorsese-style voice-over in which Wepner tells us his own story. He was devoted to his wife Phyllis (the excellent Elisabeth Moss) and wrote her terrible poems to express his love.

She could read all his moves and knew that he couldn’t help himself from cheating on her. Wepner had a pronounced self-destructive and self-pitying streak - one reason why he watched Anthony Quinn in the feature film version of Requiem For a Heavyweight again and again. Like Quinn’s character, he was nearly the champion of the world but ended up a bum. In his declining years, Wepner was reduced to taking part in freakshow-style fights against bears and gigantic wrestlers.

Unlike Rocky, The Bleeder doesn’t end with the main event. That comes midway through. His cynical, hardbitten trainer Al (Ron Perlman) secures him the fight with Ali. Although Wepner’s eyes are closed and his nose broken well before the end of 15 rounds, he keeps soldiering on and even briefly has Ali on the canvas. In defeat, he becomes a legend - at least in New Jersey.

The second half of the movie shows him on the predictable self-destructive spiral. In a messy orgy of drugs, sex and criminality, his boxing career implodes. Schreiber’s Wepner rolls with the punches just as he did inside the ring and doesn’t lose his good humour, even as the money runs out and the friends desert him.

He makes a complete fool of himself in front of Stallone, who may have stolen his life story but still tries to help him. At one stage, we see him banging his head against the steering wheel of a car in frustration but he’s a far less intense and haunted figure than Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. He is too ridiculous to make a convincing tragic hero or anti-hero. The filmmakers deal in gently ironic fashion with his romance with a worldly wise New Jersey barmaid (Naomi Watts) who helps him piece his life back together.

Wepner here comes across like one of those larger than life but absurd characters found in Damon Runyon or Ring Lardner stories. For all the violence in the ring, this is a very gentle and affectionate portrait of a fighter you can’t help but root for, however idiotic his behaviour.