Fighting Tommy Riley

One of the Sleepers of the Year: A Superb Film!
FIGHTING TOMMY RILEY has so many things going for it that it is amazing it didn't do well in the box office. Perhaps audiences are tired of 'boxing movies' ('Million Dollar Baby' sort of usurped that position for a while), but this is not a typical boxing movie: Fighting Tommy Riley takes risks all over the place and that is what helps make it so fine.

Written by J.P. Davis who also plays the title role, the story is less about Tommy Riley than it is about his trainer Marty Goldberg (long-established fine character actor Eddie Jones): this is not a self promoting Rocky/Sylvester Stallone story, fine as that films series was. For a first time writer and actor and directed by first time director Eddie O'Flaherty and cast with unknowns except for Eddie Jones, this film is a 'knockout' (pardon the pun).

Tommy Riley is a young and gifted boxer on the skids, disillusioned by his loss at an attempt at the Olympic trials, an unfortunate lapse of self-confidence that...

Excellent film
Ok, first, to deal with the two one-star reviews...

Obviously someone missed the point of the film. This isn't a buddy flick, this isn't a "and they all lived happily ever after" flick, this is first and foremost a film about two people who for whatever reason have not been given the love they feel life should sent their way.

The Professor isn't just "chester the molester", and he didn't bring Tomy to the cabin "to seduce him". Sometimes straight and gay guys can be friends, and sometimes unfortunate things happen between those friends. The Professor was hardly a sexual predator, and Tommy was not some hapless rape victim; you don't spend months of time and a heck of a lot of cash just to get some cute and straight twinkie into bed. This was a serious relationship initially founded on boxing, then founded on a really amazing give and take between the two.

That mistake, and the fact that Tommy was going nowhere even with a million bucks hanging in...

Simply Beautiful
Its normally odd that a fine film could be made that deals with both adversity and homosexuallity without outright nudity and sex being involved that it comes rather close to pornography. This is one exception. Trully, it could be admitted that the film does not have a million dollar budget, but it was made with quality and style. Both the acting of the major characters were excpetional. It was not too light that it became a comedy nor too heavy that it became messy. The mood was just right to put the simple message of adversity, the will to overcome, loyalty, and even love in all its complex forms clear. I trully recommend it. If for nothing else but for its simplicity of style and message.

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