Story of boxer’s rise, demise compelling
MOVIE REVIEW
champ Anthony Quinn. (Schreiber, so good as the hockey enforcer in “Goon,” has just the right read on Wepner, and the right physicality for the role.)
The movie is as genial and unsentimental as Wepner himself. When his manager (Ron Perlman) learns of promoter Don King’s plan to have Ali fight a disposable “white guy,” they are overjoyed to be chosen. And the fight itself is amusingly presented — Wepner is as shocked as anyone when he knocks Ali down, and suitably alarmed when the bored Ali, now ferociously roused, rises in his corner like a wounded lion.
Chuck, the boxer, is easy to like. As a husband and father — different story. The Wepner we see in “Chuck” is a man ruled by appetites. They include whiskey, women and, ultimately, drugs (the movie often plays less like “Rocky” than a broadly comic “Raging Bull”), and Wepner exhausts the patience of his wife (Elisabeth Moss).
Moss gets one good scene dressing down a would-be mistress, but she is mostly consigned to voicing disappointment and exits the film midway. Chuck then engages in a long flirtation with a bartender, and eventual wife (Naomi Watts), who keeps him at arm’s length during the selfdestructive spiral that sees his boxing career give way to prison.
In “Chuck,” Wepner watches his own star fall (he boxes bears, fights Andre the Giant) while Rocky becomes a folk hero, but Wepner is his own worst enemy. Stallone (Morgan Spector) comes off as reasonably generous — he offers Wepner a role in “Rocky II,” but the audition goes badly, and Wepner blows his Hollywood title shot. (He later sued Stallone, and settled out of court. No hard feelings. Stallone read the script for “Chuck,” and signed off on his character’s presentation in the movie.)
Wepner hated being called “the Bayonne Bleeder” and liked being known as “the Real Rocky,” but the parallels went only so far. Unlike Wepner, Rocky never went to jail for dealing cocaine.
But what’s a knockdown to a guy like Wepner? He does his two years the way he did his 15 rounds. He endures and survives. The arms of fate get tired. In the end, he’s still standing, and even reasonably happy — sober, married, thriving again.