‘The Featherweight’ Hits as Hard as Heroin

Is it a mockumentary if it isn’t mocking anything? This is the question I started to ask myself while trying to classify Director Robert Kolodny’s unconventional biopic (and feature film debut) of the great (perhaps the greatest) featherweight boxer Guglielmo Papaleo, better known as Willie Pep. Most of the time when a film or show is shot as a faux documentary, it’s typically a comedy like The Office, or, on occasion, a horror/sci-fi film like District 9. I racked my brain, asked my editor, and searched the internet for a straight drama or biopic that took the same approach as Koldony. While I found some titles here and there that might qualify, they are so unknown to me (and I’m guessing most others) that I essentially came up empty. 

At first, I was disarmed by the approach and worried that the film would lack narrative flow, but once I settled in, I quickly understood why The Featherweight received a 5-minute standing ovation at last year’s Venice Film Festival: it’s a knockout. And yeah, that description may be a little too cute, but it’s also fitting for an uncompromising film that is willing to challenge the viewer while delivering the goods. 

When we meet Pep (a tremendous James Madio), it’s 1964, he’s 42 years old and considering a sure-to-be ill-advised comeback attempt. Aside from the fact that Pep is middle-aged and six years into retirement, which brings him no pleasure, he is a boxer who has fought an astounding 230 times over his professional career. Just to give you an example of how remarkable that number is, Muhammad Ali, a very active fighter (outside of the three years he was exiled from the sport for refusing to enter the draft during the Vietnam War), only fought sixty-one professional fights until he hung up his gloves for good. Pep’s final total of 229 wins (out of 241 fights) is still the most by any boxer whose career started after 1940. The damage that his body and mind must have taken by the time he first quit boxing at the age of thirty-six is nearly impossible to comprehend.

So why would Pep, on the edge of going gray, even consider returning to the ring? Kolodny’s film posits two reasons. The first one is the most obvious, and sadly, a common story for most boxers, no matter how successful they were: money. At one point in the film, Pep states, “I made 1.2 million dollars as a boxer. I spent 1.3.” Pep is on his fourth marriage to a hopeful starlet (very well played by Ruby Wolf), and her unlikely prospects of becoming a famous actress are far more optimistic than the survival of their union. Pep laments mid-film, that his three previous wives married him for his name. “I kept the name, they kept the money,” he says. Pep is also saddled with a junkie son (played unflinchingly by Keir Gilchrist), who seemingly hates everything but smack.

No sport prepares you less for a post-athletic life than boxing. Most fighters come from bleak conditions, often lack education beyond high school, and then spend their entire careers getting hit in the face. As you might guess, a life lived as such is not good for the brain and seldom leads to a fruitful post-boxing career as anything other than maybe a commentator or a trainer–as long as your marbles stay in the bag. There’s a painfully honest depiction of Pep interviewing for a job as a hotel manager, and even with a sympathetic hiring manager sitting across the desk from him, the only position he has to offer Pep requires him to move out of his Hartford, Connecticut home and would pay him a salary that Pep considers an insult. 

But there’s a second reason why Pep is looking to shake off six years of ring rust and risk his health by getting back into the ring…he wants to. For far too many athletes–even those in less demanding sports–you only matter to others while you can perform, which also often means you only matter to yourself while you can perform. Pep is no different. He wants to matter. In a film that is shot in a very “you are there” fashion, the screenplay (by Steve Loff) works in some crushing lines. Perhaps none more so than “How you know you’re a fighter? First, you lose your legs, then you lose your money, then you lose your friends.”

Pep is down to two friends: his old trainer Bill Gore (a pitch-perfect Stephen Lang) and his long-suffering manager Bob Kaplan (Ron Livingston, whose recognizable presence is one of the few reminders you are watching a movie). Both take pity on him. Gore half-heartedly works with Pep to get him ring-ready but makes him prove himself in a sparring session that reaches a humiliating conclusion. Kaplan books nostalgia engagements with Pep’s greatest ring adversary Sandy Sadler (The Wire’s Lawrence Gilliard Jr. in quietly wrenching and effective form), and sells off Pep’s prized possessions to “fans” who want a piece of Pep they don’t deserve. 

There’s only one place Pep feels relevant. The place that causes him the most physical pain but the least amount of heartache is the “squared circle” as it is known if you’re a boxing devotee. And despite his age, diminished skill set, and the pounding he is sure to be given by his opponent, Pep does return to the ring. It’s cliché for boxing films to end with a big fight, but that’s not exactly what The Featherweight does. The Featherweight ends with a small fight. There is no world title at stake. The crowd is sizable enough, but nowhere near the draw of Pep’s salad days. Pep is in his element though, and that is more important than anything else to him. 

The film tells two tales of addiction: that of Pep’s son, and that of Pep’s reason for being. To fight. I don’t think it’s an accident that the song playing over the closing credits is an acoustic version of Lou Reed’s Heroin. 

Heroin, be the death of me

Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life

Because a mainline to my vein

Leads to a center in my head

And then I’m better off than dead

 

Boxing is Willie Pep’s heroin.

I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t speak more about James Madio’s performance as Pep. Madio shot this film while he was approaching fifty. Over a thirty-three-year career, Madio has garnered seventy-two credits. He’s one of those actors you know you’ve seen in something, but you may not be sure what. Actors can go their whole lives without scoring a role like this one. Madio waited nearly half a century. But when the opportunity finally came to his door he answered the bell. And as you see Madio as Pep, late in the film, smiling through a bloody mouthguard, the film serves both as a cautionary tale of a man who couldn’t stop, and a triumph for an actor who didn’t quit. 

Kolodny’s unconventional approach to storytelling and Madio’s Oscar-worthy lead performance have made a film that transcends at least two genres: the boxing film and the faux documentary. In doing so, they have combined to create one of the year’s best films.

The Featherweight will be released in theaters in New York and Connecticut on September 20th and Los Angeles on September 27th