It’s hard to believe your eyes when you see a film now actually exists in which Stallone meets De Niro in the boxing ring. It’s Rocky v Raging Bull, of course, a fantasy match-up no one sane ever fantasised about. It sounds like the result of a Hollywood pitch meeting gone mad, stunt casting of imperial chutzpah.
But here they really are: Stallone, the Orson Welles of action, whose career has been a constant disappointment since the heartfelt brilliance and nerve of writing Rocky and insisting he star in it; and De Niro, an enigmatic, exacting genius for 10 years who, tired, came back to earth to be a jobbing actor for the next 30.
The first relief is that Tim Kelleher, the story’s originator and co-writer, didn’t put his feet up after his basic brainwave. Grudge Match is more substantial and less funny than you’d expect. It finds “Kid” McDonnen (De Niro) and “Razor” Sharp (Stallone) 30 years after Razor pulled out of the third, deciding bout in their fierce rivalry, leaving both men unfulfilled. In an echo of Rocky’s strong working-class ethic, Razor works in a factory, and lives in a crumbling house beneath a flyover. An aerial shot sweeping over Pittsburgh tract housing to the steel and glass wealth across the river suggests some other, richer film. Kid, meanwhile, runs a bar where he replays his hatred of Razor in a dinner theatre puppet show, in absurd tribute to Jake La Motta’s Raging Bull Hamlet routine.
Razor pulled out of the fight that never was because Kid slept with the girl he loved, Sally Rose (Kim Basinger in the present). It takes a computer game of their bouts to bring them back together, and when Kid laying into Razor with both in motion-capture fat suits becomes an “Old Guys Gone Wild!” YouTube smash (pictured above), a third fight becomes a serious prospect. The sixtysomethings urgently need trainers, of course. Razor picks his old pal “Lightning” Conlon (Alan Arkin, acidly irascible), who now leads cross-country runs in a mobility scooter. Kid ends up with B.J. (Jon Bernthal), the unfortunately named son he never knew he had from his one-night stand with Sally.
De Niro gives a genuine edge of impulsiveness and desperation to Kid. This master acting craftsman uses the way he shovels down food in diners to make him real, and mugs for laughs expertly. Bernthal helps make his relationship with his son tersely convincing. Stallone still can’t do comedy (and nor can Basinger, pictured with Stallone); but his strangely battered, surgically resculpted face has unlikely, stubborn dignity at 67.
The emotional fall-out our flawed heroes have to deal with as their past is revived makes the actual fight seem unnecessary, even worrying. But, although it’s a plain mismatch (there’s a reason De Niro and Stallone played middleweight and heavyweight champs), and takes ridiculous twists, it’s also ferociously committed. This could have been funnier, or else dialled down its daftness. It could also have been a whole lot worse.
