“Day of the Fight” (2024) is set in 1989 New York and follows boxer Irish Mike Flannigan (Michael Pitt), whom everyone calls Mikey. As he prepares for the biggest fight of his life, the film intercuts the past with the present to depict Mikey’s state of mind as he goes through a mental checklist of all the things that he needs to do and the people that he needs to meet before going to Madison Square Garden. As the day unfolds, Mikey’s story is revealed: his motivation, his past sins, the people that matter to him and his desire to set the record straight by doing good. Will he win?
With age comes experience, and Pitt delivers his best work to date as Mikey with an overflowing open-hearted performance. If you are already a Pitt fan, “Day of the Fight” is a must see, but if you are unfamiliar with his work or someone who may stay away expecting his usual fare, frigid or demented roles, give him another chance. He is unrecognizable, effectively carries the movie since he is in every shot and is a generous partner to everyone that he shares a scene with whether it is a black cat, random people that he encounters or some of the greatest character actors of our time playing pivotal people in Mikey’s life.
“Day of the Fight” will feel familiar since director and writer Jack Huston in his directorial debut pays homage to a lot of classic films. (Writer tip: homage if the movie has soul, rip-off if it does not.) Even if you do not watch a lot of movies, even a cursory knowledge of the “Rocky” franchise will make Mikey seem familiar. The less that you know going to into the movie, the more that you will enjoy it. Mikey had everything: a boxing championship, a wife, Jessica (Nicolette Robinson), and a kid, Sasha (Kat Elizabeth Williams), but he lost everything due to an accident that gets fully revealed in the denouement though the audio in the opening tells the whole story as the soundtrack to Mikey’s nightmares. If the film works, it is because Mike is introduced in an elemental stripped down fashion then gets built up only to be further distilled as he approaches the end.
The present is intercut with the past from his childhood to the fallout from the accident. These time jumps should not be confusing to even acolyte film viewers. Mikey is not trying to get back on top, but this day is about showing appreciation to everyone, even his abusive father (Joe Pesci in a stunning, hold back your tears role). If you saw Spike Lee’s best movie, “25th Hour” (2002), the story has that same poignant, melancholic outlook on life as so ephemeral and already gone that the slightest relationships hold so much meaning and beauty. The story gets how important the rhythm of daily life is: the homeless guy on the corner, the waitress at your favorite breakfast spot, a neighborhood kid, Sam (Milan Marsh, who proves there are no small roles). It is also an incredibly New York movie in the way that it is effortlessly and credibly multicultural without feeling as if it is checking off boxes. Only one scene stumbles, but it is hard to resist one of the most manmade majestic skylines in the world even if the buildings are tell-tale signs that it was actually shot later than the onscreen events.
“Day of the Fight” is also one of the rare movies that shows physical affection between men. Initially it feels like an unofficial “Boardwalk Empire” reunion with a brief cameo from Steve Buscemi and a more extended one from Anatol Yusef, but that ends early in the film. The men that matter most to Mikey are Stevie (the eternally excellent Ron Perlman), his coach, and Patrick Donnelly (one of the best character actors of his time John Magaro), the parish priest and childhood friend. There is not one actor who drops the baton.
“Day of the Fight” is also one of the few boxing films in 2024 that understands that the boxing match needs to tell the same story as the overall movie. A lot of movies about boxers seem to treat the fight as an afterthought by curtailing it or omitting it altogether. While the best boxing shots contain both fighters’ bodies, Huston does the next best thing by emphasizing notes like foot or arm movement pivotal to the fight’s outcome. Mikey’s fighting style tells the moviegoers as much about him as the dialogue or his more quotidian interactions. In one gym fight, it is the moves that Mikey chooses not to use that conveys Mikey’s interiority. More importantly, the fight is actually good and does not feel as if victory is an inevitable conclusion. It is also not the conclusion of the film.
“Day of the Fight” makes it obvious that Mikey is settling accounts. The movie poster makes the relationship between Jessica and Mikey seem more ideal that it was. The flashbacks offer glimpses of the ways that Mikey escapes and succumbs to his childhood by choosing to fight a decade out of the ring. Huston and editor Joe Klotz never make the timing or the length of the flashbacks predictable, which makes the scenes feel fresh without feeling out of step. You can have rhythm or variety, and the latter is more demanding. A lot of movies show something that was already told and can feel repetitive, but that never happens here. Even though the dialogue explains what Huston is showing, it does not spell everything out regarding Mikey’s mother and her relationship to Mikey, but in many ways, Mikey is repeating the past though it seems astonishing that no one seems to see it. If Prince’s “When Doves Cry” started playing, it would be great mental preparation to armchair analyze Mikey.
“Day of the Fight” has great audio that goes beyond an evocative soundtrack. Every shot is black and white except for brief flashes of color at significant moments or objects, the soundtrack is often diegetic. Mikey has a Walkman (remember cassettes) playing mournful violins, but on occasion, the surrounding sound lowers to indicate a high-pitched noise to indicate tinnitus or the murmur of other voices disappear. Huston shows a level of attention to detail that indicates that as much as everyone may enjoy seeing him in front of the camera, he also has a calling behind it as well.
Some patrons thought the ending was ambiguous, but if you did, I’ll post spoilers. Even a hardened, seen-it-all movie critic who can see it coming a mile away can start cutting onions in the theater. “I wish we could have talked like this when it mattered.” Damn.
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When Mikey returns to his apartment, his life is flashing before his eyes because he is dying. Also there is a color shot to show that Sasha is crying after receiving the medal and card.
