Movies: De Niro’s back in the ring in “Hands of Stone.”
But “Hands of Stone” has too many subplots to follow
6¼55 Biopic. R. In English and Spanis with subtitles. 105 minutes.
Panamanian prizefighter Roberto Duran is best known for defeating Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980 to become the welterweight world boxing champion — then dropping out of their rematch months later midfight. “No más,” he supposedly said to the referee, and in one unprecedented moment a national idol became a pariah.
The story practically begs for a movie, though not necessarily the one “Hands of Stone” delivers. Written and directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz, the drama stars Edgar Ramírez as Roberto and Robert De Niro as his legendary coach. The two are exceptionally well cast, but they can’t save an unfocused jumble of a movie that doubles as a cautionary tale about the importance of film editing.
“Hands of Stone” seems hellbent on setting a world record for most subplots, and the scenes are spliced together so rapidly it’s as if some projectionist — or the digital equivalent, anyway — accidentally hit fast-forward.
The movie begins by going through the predictable motions of Roberto’s upbringing in Panama, all narrated by the coach, Ray Arcel. The future boxer is raised by a single mother, after his father, an American, ditches them. That abandonment compounds Roberto’s rage against the United States, a country he sees as profiting off its ownership of the Canal Zone while Panama’s citizens remained impoverished.
This isn’t just a story about a boxer who rose from nothing, the movie promises during those early scenes; it’s also about international relations and cultural pride. Putting Roberto Duran’s rise in historical context could have been powerful — if only Jakubowicz had stopped there. Instead we get a subplot about Ray’s troubles with the mob and a completely unrelated familial crisis. We get a romantic story involving Roberto courting his future wife, Felicidad (Ana de Armas). And, once Sugar Ray Leonard is introduced (played by pop star Usher), we somehow get to spy on him at home. If this story is narrated by Roberto’s coach, why are we privy to Sugar Ray’s sex life?
Roberto is undoubtedly an interesting character. He’s a tough guy who’s surprisingly thin-skinned, and he’s motivated by a deep hunger for wealth and success after growing up literally starving. When Ray coaches him during a fight, Roberto gets amusingly touchy about criticism, but the two form a bond with some sporadically funny repartee.
The movie is at its best when the two are sitting around chatting, revealing Ramírez’s gift for sly comedy delivered through subtle looks. But he doesn’t otherwise get much chance to use it. The relationship is mostly surfacelevel, with dialogue so forgettable it fades from memory before the characters even finish saying their lines.
At least the boxing scenes are well filmed, complete with stomachchurning sound effects of cracking bones when Roberto — famous for the hands of stone of the title — delivers his powerful hits. You could call that a win, though it’s not much of a victory considering how badly the movie tries to be about more than throwing punches.