Bleed For This: Vinny Pazienza's Journey from Tragedy to Triumph

Angelo receives confirmation that Vinny has been granted a title fight against Gilbert Dele. Vinny wins the bout via technical knockout, which makes him the WBA World Light Middleweight champion. Some days later, Angelo tells Vinny that he will be fighting Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán. Vinny is pleased, and gets in a car with his friend Jimmy to get some coffee. On the way, they are hit head-on by an oncoming car. Jimmy sustains minor injuries, but Vinny suffers a critical neck injury. As he regains consciousness in the hospital, the doctor informs him that he might never walk again, and will certainly never fight again. He offers to better Vinny's chances of walking by performing a spinal fusion. While this would guarantee that he can walk again, it would limit movement in his neck. Thus, boxing would be out of the question. Against his doctor's recommendation, Vinny opts to be fitted with a Halo, a medical device in which a circular metal brace is screwed into the skull in four spots, and propped up with four metal rods. This would allow him to regain movement in his neck, which could allow him to box again. Despite Vinny's optimism, the notion is rejected by Rooney.

Bleed For This

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TheWrap.com's Claudia Puig wrote: "The boxing drama Bleed for This has a powerful story and a strong lead performance in its corner, but falls short of knockout status. Hampered by clichéd writing and stereotypical portrayals, this extraordinary true-life account feels run-of-the-mill."[28][29][30]

The problem, though, is that we never get enough sense of Paz's interior life to judge this movie as anything other than a comeback story about a nice guy who got knocked out by the cosmos and hauled himself up. Its modesty is welcome, and its deep knowledge of boxing pictures and sports weepies helps the story glide along. Still, there's a deeper, more powerful tale here that remains frustratingly untapped, maybe because the film knows that if it got too messy, contradictory or raw, it would lose the "inspirational" label and become art.

Many reviews of this film have complained about how predictable the story is, which seems like an odd complaint, given the script's basis in fact. But if you think of "Bleed for This" in terms of a commercial drama rather than as a simple story of a man rebuilding his life, you might have to admit they're on to something.

The film excels in its portrayal of what it means to be injured. Too many boxing films downplay the fragility of the body, unless a hero is being warned that if he keeps fighting, he'll go blind or suffer brain damage (he always disregards the warning and wins anyway). The middle section of "Bleed for This," which focuses on Paz and Rooney's secret rehab project, is an exception. We see Paz sneaking into the basement, gingerly sliding onto his weight bench, and trying to bench-press a barbell he hasn't touched in years, then removing weight after weight until only the bar remains. The first rule of rehab is "start small." It's great to see a movie not only acknowledge this reality, but make the man embracing it seem heroic.

But the movie has major problems. The biggest is Teller, a committed and likable actor miscast as Paz. You're aware of how hard he must have worked to get in shape, sell the accent, get the demeanor right, and so on, but he's never wholly credible as the hero. This performance feels built from without, not found within. Teller lacks the affable meathead quality that made Mark Wahlberg so compelling in "The Fighter," the movie that this film's modern, white ethnic, working class setting evokes. He's just right in films like "The Spectacular Now" and "Whiplash," playing nonviolent guys struggling with specific personal demons, but I never bought him here as an Italian-American, a guy with a working class sensibility, or a boxer who's driven and skilled enough to win five world titles in three different weight classes (lightweight, junior middleweight and super middleweight). He's bouncy, even chirpy, verging on Tom Hanks or John Cusack in light-comic-lead mode, and while he gets certain signatures right in the ring (such as Paz's whirligig punch) the editing and camerawork often seem to be doing too much of the work for him (when he throws a flurry of combinations, he looks like he's dog-paddling).

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Families can talk about how Bleed for This compares to other boxing movies. Is it a film about redemption, the human spirit, or something else? What do movies about this sport tend to have in common? Why do you think that is?

When it comes to boxing films and Hollywood, the comeback ingredient is often overused. A rough and tumble young individual fights for money and fame against all odds, gets knocked down a few times, and makes his way back. It's a comeback story framed around a physical sport that electrifies its audience. You've seen it a thousand times. All of those cliches and plot threads are present in "Bleed for This." The difference is that in this film, those cliches and threads are all real and based on a true story. All of which you see in this amazing and heartfelt film really happened.

Vinny Paz's story doesn't need embellishment, which is something Hollywood can't help itself with when bringing a true story to the big screen. You can't take the cinematic out of a movie no matter how true the story is, but "Bleed for This" is an exception to that rule. It bleeds authenticity, real visceral action, and performances that can't be talked about enough.

As Paz told me this summer, he isn't an easy guy to portray and Teller doesn't just make an attempt to impersonate the guy. He climbs inside his skin and becomes Paz. It's not a performance where you commend the makeup artist and the handpicked role selection. Teller will blow you away as a fighter who didn't stop. To Paz, the bell never rung. You just kept fighting. Teller embraces the colorful character that Paz was while dialing in perfectly to his vulnerabilities and stone cold will power to come back from the highest form of adversity. If Teller isn't in the discussion for an Oscar, something is wrong. It's a true performance that doesn't carry an ounce of fakeness.

This film will help people who have suffered a crippling injury. Now, will their doctors like hearing that they tried to lift a barbell with a halo attached to their head? Probably not. The true juice of "Bleed for This" and Vinny's story is the spirit uplift it provides. Sports films reviews are always based on the physical action and visual skill set on display. With this film, it's the internal boost that hangs with you after the theater.

See this film. I implore you to take the time. If you are a boxing fan, it will enthrall you. If you are a casual film lover, it will answer that old question. Do these amazing sports comeback stories actually take place and is it all real? The answer is a resounding yes.

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After the first fight the doctor says Vinny is in ketosis. This is a condition in which there is so little sugar in the body that fat is broken into ketones for energy. For diabetics this can be fatal, but ketogenic diets are well known for weight loss and even being studied for control of epilepsy.

The fight coordinator was knocked out by Edwin Rodriguez when filming the final fight (on the final day of shooting). Ben Younger explained that this led to a much shorter than planned sequence in the movie.

Vinnie Pazienza's win against Gilbert Dele did not come by the way of knockout at 1:47 of the 2nd Round, but rather via referee stoppage at 2:10 of the 12th. Also, this fight did not take place immediately after his loss to Roger Mayweather: Pazienza lost to Mayweather in 1988 and the fight with Dele happened in 1991. During this time period, Vinnie Paz fought seven times. Three of these fights were for titles, he lost two and won one.

Bleed For This is an enjoyable but very generic and old-fashioned boxing movie that arrives in British cinemas at an unfortunate moment. It tells the true story of Vinny Pazienza, a Rhode Island brawler and world champ who returned to the ring successfully after breaking his neck in a car crash. Earlier this week, British boxer Nick Blackwell who rashly started sparring again after suffering a serious head injury in a fight against Chris Eubank Jr. was put in an induced coma. 2ff7e9595c