Review // GLADIATOR - The good one, not that other one you're thinking of

(Stupid Youtube thinks I'm talking about that other Gladiator, so I can't find a trailer for this one, the good Gladiator)

Tommy Riley moves to the projects of Chicago with his reformed gambling addict dad and quickly finds that the only way to survive at his new school, as well as keep away the loan sharks looking for his dad, is to join an underground boxing league run by a super fucking evil Brian Dennehey. Yes, it pretty much seems like every dude at his high school, no matter how scrawny, is moonlighting as a boxer-for-cash at night, and Tommy quickly gets sucked in. This would seem a brutal initiation for a teenager to have to endure simply for living on the wrong side of the tracks, but the fact that both Tommy (Twin Peaks' James Marshall) and Cuba Gooding Jr. both look around 29 makes it seem a little less harsh.

After a few matches, Tommy (who is practically a stoic, teenaged Man-With-No-Name) realizes that he and the other boxers are just meat for the grinder, and Dennehey is turning the crank. There is a boxing montage to a really shitting early 90's rock song and then Tommy is pitted against Cuba, his friend who has recently sustained a dangerous injury, so Tommy refuses to fight him. This incurs the wrath of Dennehey, a former boxer himself, who climbs in the ring to teach Tommy a hard, barefisted lesson. Tommy beats the shit out of him and the movie ends.

I saw Gladiator twice in the theatres in 1992 (at the Hyland, RIP) and for some reason I liked it a lot. I was pretty sure my 3am viewing this morning (with a squirming baby in my lap) would add it to the list of childhood favorites that have not stood the test of time, but was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up. It's not amazing obviously, but there's something about the simple approach, browny-grey tone of the rundown Chicago setting and a great asshole in Dennehey, that makes it all stick together. I distinctly remember getting pumped up by the opening, Seal's "Crazy" (haha) playing over shots of Chi-town. Also, Dennehey looks almost exactly like my dad so that kinda adds another weird layer to the movie for me where I'm talking to the characters on screen, "don't let my dad talk to you like that Cuba Gooding Jr." or "Get him Tommy! Kick my dad's ass!"