Bleed for This

The true story of Vinny Pazienza. The boxer from Providence had taken two world titles when a car crash broke the C4 vertebra in his neck and cracked C3 and C5, and he was told he might never walk again. What the film puts at its centre is the halo: a metal ring weighing over four pounds, screwed into the skull at four points, with four rods resting on the upper body. Pazienza wore it for three months. And while wearing it he started lifting weights in his basement without telling his doctors. Thirteen months after the crash he was back in the ring, beating former world champion Luis Santana over ten rounds. He took the IBO middleweight title in 1993 and beat Roberto Durán twice, in 1994 and 1995. Miles Teller plays Pazienza and Aaron Eckhart, unrecognisable, plays his trainer Kevin Rooney. Ben Younger directed. The film's problem is exactly the strength of its material: the real story is so extreme that telling it never pushes the film outside the standard shape of a boxing picture. The halo sequences and Teller's physical work are still worth the time.