This exchange in the middle of Robert Kolodny’s nimble biopic “The Featherweight” brings out the underlying vulnerabilities in this tragic character’s figure to a T. The man of course is the two times featherweight world champion Willie Pep who fought over two hundred and thirty times and won more than his fair share of those fights. And of course this was in the forties and of the fifties as the old moving pictures demonstrate. When we meet him here it is 1964 and the aged 42 Pep James Madio is keen to return to the boxing arena. And a filming crew is present in order to record this long lost endeavor that itself, as it turns out, transforms Kolodny’s film into an unflinching meditation on midlife crises and broken fame and popularity — even though some of its blows don’t quite sell.
In a manner reminiscent of the Maysles brothers’ direct cinema, “The Featherweight” integrates us into Pep’s desperately insane endeavour to re-enter the boxing ring. His moment did not happen in the past, but in fact, with the help of the cameras, it still will happen. This indeed, Pep thinks, is for the glory of this returned old champion, proof of his boast that he can still pick up the gloves. However, in the course of the following one hour and a half, the same cameras only focus on the cracks in his personal and professional life. That is the fascinating centre of Kolodny’ s picture – a ‘Raging Bull’ study of character at ringside mixed with documentarist & specimen stunts of dragging out revelations within.
It’s the perfect role for Madio, a dependable character actor who has just begun to get a major breakthrough regarding the kind of role he has always yearned for. Midge is amusingly fidgety as Pep- a proud little Sicilian. And, a career full of KOs, ex-wives and the playful nature of time has scored a few of such impacts. So you could say that when we first meet him, he seems rather too ready to tell off about his good old days; the Maui coffee joint where the guys sit seems to appreciate it, but his business manager Ron Livingston and ex trainer Stephen Lang understand it for the pathetic display that it is. Wherever he goes, however, he is still followed by his adversary, Black featherweight Sandy Saddler Lawrence Gilliard Jr. , and the fact that Blackberry beat Pep when she was younger only contributes to how much worse Punsedep’s fate of being forgotten in the gravel actually is. Pep uses a lot of strong language about returning to the fray, only nobody several out of box prefers this fight; the more crazily he tries to find it the more ridiculous it starts to look.
Purely considering his domestic relationships, it’s apparent that he has not been free from this family drama. His third wife is Linda (Ruby Wolf) who is considerably younger than him and her lovelorn vanity busies herself with the pursuit of her own acting career just as Pep is out of leg. His mother variations: Inma Aiello, comes off as the cliché quiet grandmother, which only converses in Italian to avoid Linda piercing any of the Italian culture and specifically ‘inappropriate comments’ bastering over the table. Then adding all this is Billy Jr. Kier Gilchrist, who can’t seem to get over the fact that Pep abandoned his mother and carries that inordinate resentment and ‘bag’ of opiate drugs wherever he goes. Well, Name any child would feel to take his father Willie Pep surname.
Robert’s brother cinematographer Adam Kolodny manages to evoke such intimate conflicts through a period simulated 16mm that is, say, formidable; the ‘graphics’ concers reveal em 60s the featherweight titles and fonts which one gets swallowed into the documentation and presentation. They sprightly channel the scenes like there was a hint of Cassavetes and infinite realism in the air, all frazzle and quirky disruptions among the grouplet. Most of the actors were given time to work with the dialogue rather than the script before filming, which provides freedom and warm unpredictability to the interpretation of one of Steve Loff’s scripts. That, then, is compounded by Kolodny’s shaky camera which navigates between the actors like an accomplished boxer.
Yet all of these tools, and all this period detail, relate back to the most bog standard of plots that has been put on film over and again here to mean a lost splendor in a more wistful fashion. An over the hill sportsman trying to salvage his glory with is quite an act when his marriage is in turmoils? Please raise your hands if you have not come across this plot line before. There are sometimes where the loose ends in the narrative results in dead weight rather in the second segment especially; for instance Willie, like all of us, find ourselves in times there just waiting for the good parts. Now, this is when the story dreadfully rounds off neatly but not without one-two tragedies which retrospectively makes us feel all the more pathetic to ask how Willie has let down many people (and been let down by them all) in his crusade to win back his glory.
The most exciting aspect, however, is how Kolodny makes his characters averse to the camera when they clearly comprehend the price that comes with exposing one’s self to the cameras. Willie or Linda will let their guard down, then request the movie people “don’t use that bit. —off camera!.” (That we see it means, of course, they didn’t.) Reasoning, obviously basing it on the denial of everyone being self-centered, the camera in itself is in fact a more sophisticated dramatisation technique than is fictionalised whining: It’s very well done, an additional stylisation device that more than justifies the narrative-doc conceit.
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