‘Day of the Fight’ Review: Another Broken-Down Boxer Travels the Comeback Trail
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic As directorial head-to-heads go, Jack Huston versus Stanley Kubrick isn’t anyone’s idea of a fair fight.
But that’s exactly the clash the actor and Hollywood scion sets up for himself in his directorial debut “Day of the Fight” — named for Kubrick’s famous 1951 documentary short of the same title, and likewise following an Irish-American boxer through his daily New York routine, in the hours leading up to a climactic evening match.
At 108 minutes to Kubrick’s 12, Huston’s fiction feature has bulk on its side, which isn’t quite the same as weight: Padding out its episodic day-in-the-life structure with a stakes-raising melodramatic backstory, “Day of the Fight” lunges for the tear ducts while never quite ringing true, rooted less in real life than in the tradition of countless underdog boxing dramas that have gone before.
Which isn’t to say Huston’s film is unfelt or unaffecting: It knows those past films fondly, and what it borrows from others, it doesn’t borrow with a trace of cynicism.
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