Film review of “The Featherweight” (2024)

“You need to think about how you will be remembered.”
“That's it, Bill. Who remembers me?”

That dialogue, which takes place halfway through Robert Kolodny's nimble biopic The Featherweight, perfectly sums up the anxieties at the center of the tragic figure. The man, of course, is two-time featherweight champion Willie Pep, who fought more than 230 fights in his career and won more than his fair share of them. Of course, this was in the 1940s and '50s, as grainy newsreels show us. When we meet him here, it's 1964, and Pep (James Madio), now 42, is eager to get back in the ring. And a camera crew is here to capture that once-in-a-lifetime comeback, making Kolodny's film a hard-hitting reflection on midlife crisis and fading fame – even if he doesn't land all of his punches.

Recorded as a kind of direct cinema documentary a la The Maysles' “The Featherweight” keeps us like a fly on the wall watching Pep's ambitious rise back to the ring, even though his prime is well behind him. The documentary, Pep thinks, is meant to celebrate the return of an aging champion, a clear proof of his cockiness that he still has what it takes to compete. But over the next hour and a half, those same cameras merely shine a light on the cracks that exist in his personal and professional life. That's the compelling core of Kolodny's film, which mixes a kind of “raging bull” character study at ringside with in-depth interrogation of the documentarian and subject.

Madio, a reliable character actor who is finally getting the kind of star turn he deserves, is endearingly nervous in his role as Pep, a diminutive Sicilian with plenty of pride to hurt. And a career full of knockouts, ex-wives and the vagaries of time has certainly produced some hits. When we meet him, he is a little to eager to tell stories of his glory days; the guys down at the cafe seem to like it, but his manager (Ron Livingston) and his old trainer (Stephen Lang) see it for the sad spectacle that it is. At every gig he is also haunted by his arch-nemesis, black featherweight Sandy Saddler (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), whose knockout of Pep in his prime makes his parallel descent into irrelevance all the more painful. Pep talks big about getting back into the fight, but nobody wants it; the more aggressively he pursues it, the more pathetic it becomes.

It's easy to understand why he chases these ghosts; his life at home is hardly any better. His third wife, a much younger woman named Linda (Ruby Wolf), is pursuing her own budding acting career just as Pep's step is losing its own momentum. His mother (Imma Aiello) is the classic, taciturn grandmawho only speak Italian at the dinner table, so Linda can't understand the insults. Then there's Billy Jr. (Kier Gilchrist), a young man who resents Pep's abandonment of his mother and his drug problem that he can't shake. Willie Pep might as well change his last name to Loman.

Cinematographer Adam Kolodny (Robert's brother) captures these intimate tensions in a fascinating simulacrum of period-accurate 16mm footage; the title designs and fonts all scream '60s, and it's easy to get lost in the documentary immediacy of the action. Each scene is captured with Cassavetes-esque naturalism, with all the tense nerves and lived-in idiosyncrasies of the ensemble. The actors were encouraged to improvise before shooting, which gives the performances a certain looseness and unpredictability, then accentuated by Kolodny's shaky camera, which jumps between the actors like a skilled boxer.

But all of these devices and all of these historical details serve a slow-paced tale of fading glory that feels like it's been told before. An aging athlete past his prime trying to recapture his youth while his personal life falls apart? Wake me up if you've heard this story before. There are also moments when the narrative looseness results in a sluggish pace, especially in the second act; we're often left waiting for the good to happen, just like Willie. But the third act is where the story happily picks up its pace, a one-two punch of personal tragedies that only highlight how Willie has let others down (and been let down by them), all in a futile quest to regain his lost status.

Most fascinating, though, is the way Kolodny turns his characters against the camera as they slowly realize what it really costs to put your life on camera. Willie or Linda will make a slip-up and then ask the filmmakers behind the camera to “cut that part out.” (That we see it, of course, means they didn't.) It's an interesting twist in the drama, that the mere presence of the camera reflects our characters' selfishness and vulnerability right back at them. It's handled subtly, a stylistic twist that more than justifies the narrative documentary conceit.

The Featherweight takes its hilarious tale of middle-aged men chasing their glory days to new levels with some smart, unexpected performances and a truly intriguing aesthetic framework. The film may not be an absolute knockout punch, but it lands a few good punches before the bell rings.