Underdog puts his best foot forward

Jawbone 15 Cert, 91min

Dir Thomas Napper Starring Johnny Harris, Ray Winstone, Michael Smiley, Ian Mcshane

Jawbone is an underdog boxing film from an underdog source – redoubtable star Johnny Harris, who made an astonishing impression as a sorrowful pimp in London to Brighton (2006) and has deserved more leading roles in the decade since.

Writing himself one isn’t a bad way forward. He’s fitted a part to his own back, that of washed-up South London fighter Jimmy Mccabe, that lets him occupy the film beautifully, never too pushily. Other actors in boxing flicks give off palpable vibes of straining to rise to the occasion. If anything, Harris does the opposite – he sinks, or sags, into this role like someone letting their whole bodyweight tumble into a knackered old armchair.

Jimmy is a wreck. A one-time junior champ, he’s an alcoholic who hasn’t boxed in years. The only woman in his life was his late mother, and now, thanks to impending demolition, he’s about to be thrown out of the council flat they lived in. The closest he’s got to a fight, lately, is getting testy with the security at his local council, who have tried three times to relocate him.

Out on his ear, he can only think to break in through the roof of his old boxing gym, and camps there nightly without the manager (Ray Winstone) finding out.

In the daytime, he begs for the same establishment’s mercy, making small steps to get himself back in shape. Winstone’s William is stern with him, having seen it all before, and Michael Smiley’s Eddie can be sterner still.

The dynamic inside, with these two humouring Jimmy while mainly concentrating on the kids, has an Eastwood-and-freeman feel – you wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that Million Dollar Baby is one of Harris’s favourite films, or perhaps his director, Thomas Napper’s. The scrabble for self-improvement feels identical. Especially by comparison, not having one female character who counts for anything might well be a deliberate emphasis, but it can leave the film somewhat oxygen-deprived.

Ian Mcshane has one lengthy scene: he’s a promoter, greasy of palm and avuncular of manner, who throws Jimmy a free steak dinner, and sizes him up with those basilisk eyes. There’s a payday up north with some young, psychotic pretender.

It’s hardly glory that’s at stake, just an uptick in self-respect from ground zero, and a couple of grand. This is the ceiling Jawbone sets itself – a cramping of ambition that’s oddly admirable, even when the film’s tone can come across as excessively Stygian. It needs Mcshane, just as it needs that cracked voice of Winstone’s, and Smiley’s growing authority as a character actor after their own heart. Most of all, it needs Harris, who has built and rendered a character Ken Loach might have won awards for. TR