No más, please
This Roberto Durán story will make you want to throw in the towel for boxing movies
eVEN for a boxer, the Roberto Durán portrayed in “Hands of Stone” is a lout, and that’s saying something. It’s like noting, “Even for a gymnast, she’s really bendy,” or, “Even for a gardener, he knows a lot about mulch.”
In this trite and vulgar boxing flick, Edgar Ramírez plays the Panamanian fighter from 1971 to the ’80s as a skeezy, sullen, arrogant hothead, a raging tool. At least he isn’t a child molester: more of a child-sex enthusiast who flirts with a 14-year-old schoolgirl (Ana de Armas) by shoving her up against a wall. She changes her mind about him after seeing him getting into a fancy car and they wed: Love wins!
Durán is turned into a champion by his trainer, embodied by the faded remnants of the formerly talented actor Robert De Niro. The trainer gives advice like “I want you to focus,” and “Boxing is a mental sport.” Sure, kind of like how chess is about breaking the other guy’s jaw. Just once, can’t we have an honest boxing movie? “Son, I want you to hit the other guy really hard. In the face. Repeatedly.”
Off we go on a decadent jaunt through the ’70s, with Durán coming across as a slightly less affable version of Scarface. He names his boy children Roberto Durán, insults the wife of his rival Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond, lending the film its only sunny moments), wins a fight by socking a rival in the crotch, and is discovered by his missus under a pile of naked bimbos in Vegas. Other scenes are about how Coach can’t stop Roberto from nearly throwing a bout because he’s eating everything that isn’t nailed down: The man isn’t plagued by demons but by desserts. “I don’t want to be hungry anymore,” Durán says, nonmetaphorically, as he stuffs his face.
Durán loses his nerve and retires from boxing during a 1980 fight with Leonard (he claims he never said “No más,” as if that makes walking out on fans less dishonorable). The walkout, I kid you not, is one that the movie blames on the PTSD the Panamanian Durán suffers from seeing American flags in the crowd. (“Hands of Stone” is, among its other failings, freakishly angry about the Panama Canal. Filthy Americans, how dare they march into another country and inflict infrastructure on it!)
The film, written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, isn’t a tale of the corrupting influence of fame, nor a tragic fall from innocence: Durán is about as admirable as algae from the moment we meet him. The best you can say about him is he managed to get rich being pond scum. So call this a Horatio Algae story.