THE HARDER THEY FALL
(Columbia) A Cert. ANY film that exposes the cruelty and racketeering of big boxing will find me in its corner; but what appeals to me as worth saying isn’t necessarily well said, and The Harder They Fall doesn’t quite convince.
Could a publicity campaign and a string of fixed fights really get a boxer who couldn’t box at all as far as a title bout? Or do I underestimate human credulity? Anyway, it is well done, and if at first you don’t quite believe, the later part of the film, when the — that can’t be fixed has to be faced, worth waiting ued if you have a stomach. Mike Lane is Toro Moreno, the builtup boxer, a physical giant and a likeable, childlike fellow; but the more important players are Rod Steiger as the racketeer-in-chief and Humphrey Bogart as the out-of-work journalist turned publicity man, in charge of the build-up; but really, of course, a guy with a slumbering conscience. Both do well, though I doubt whether Mr Steiger will wear as well as Bogy did. Max Baer and Jersey Joe Walcott are pugs of different kinds, and Jan Sterling is the journalist’s wife, now patient, now not. Based on a novel by Philip Yordan, well directed by Mark Robson, It has all the pace you could want; and its use of the familiar streets and places of American big cities make it seem at times remarkably like the real thing.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570418.2.45.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 26
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245THE HARDER THEY FALL New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 26
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