The Harder They Fall

Solid Entertainment, 2 May 2010

Author: gary-444 from United Kingdom


*** This review may contain spoilers ***


A solid, if unspectacular screen farewell from Humphrey Bogarde as a washed up sports writer, Eddie Willis, drawn into Boxing Match Fixing. Director Mark Robson had a fine reputation before this film in a career which was to go on to enjoy further critical success. He knows how to tell a story, and much is crammed into the running time of 1 hour and 49 minutes.

The area where the film does struggle is in what genre it is operating. It's not really a sports film, as the focus is on match fixing. As a thriller it offers few surprises, and it scarcely scrapes over the line as a Noir. It is at it's best as a straight forwards drama, well acted, and well told.

Bogarde was to die within 18 months of making this film, and his drawn appearance adds a poignancy to his portrayal of an out of work journalist, down on his luck. The mechanics, and dynamics, of boxing chicanery curiously are unchanged half a century later. The same story could be told now. Mike Lane plays Toro Moreno, a Latin American man mountain, who can't fight. Rod Steiger plays Nick Benko the callous leader of the Match Fixing ring.

A few period characteristics stand out to the modern viewer. The detail of the fixing is shown almost documentary style as though it needs to be explained to the viewer. And although the callousness of the fixers is exposed, Willis gives his corrupt earnings to a beaten Moreno at the end in an act of moral atonement, evil cannot be seen to wholly triumph. And women are either briefly portrayed as good time girls, or incidental to proceedings.

I suspect that when this was first released, it was a shocking expose, to 21st Century viewers the corruption is routine. But the story is sufficiently fast paced and tight, and the acting, particularly by Bogarde sufficiently strong ,for it to still stand squarely on its own two feet now