Based on a novel by Craig Davidson – who also writes under the pen-name, Nick Cutter – The Fight Machine (2022) is, by some strange chance, the second of Davidson’s/Cutter’s novels to get adapted for the big screen, with both films appearing at this year’s Fantasia (The Breach being the other). It’s a pulpy, often brutal story about two unconnected lives and how they come into contact via the sketchy world of bare-knuckle boxing. That all being said, the brutality is concentrated into a few major fights, and the film as a whole is more of a ‘journey, not destination’ affair, considering ideas of masculinity and male social roles along the way. It doesn’t really delve into the more philosophical leanings of the most obvious comparison, Fight Club (1999), but there is a little of that in there.
The film starts with a voiceover, deliberating on the level of change which is actually possible to an already-formed personality; it suggests that your average man can only change by about 5% (and no, I have no idea what the criteria are for measuring that). But the point is – even that insignificant-sounding change can mean a seismic alteration to a man’s character. It’s the essence of what takes place for our two male leads here, but particularly for Paul (Greg Hovanessian). We meet Paul in a nightclub, and we quickly get a sense that cash and coke have given him a false sense of his own security: he mouths off at a guy chatting to his date, and for his troubles, he gets an absolute pasting outside. To paraphrase that Mike Tyson quote, everyone has a plan, right up until they get punched in the mouth. This experience leads to a kind of epiphany in Paul; the way to fix his dented self-esteem (and face) seems to be to get himself fit by: joining a gym, getting bullied by the staff and – all in one session, mind – trying to take a shortcut to success, via some under-the-counter performance enhancers. Before long, he’s eyeing the boxing gym.
Elsewhere, up-and-comer Robbie (Dempsey Bryk) spends his time training for an unavoidably glowing career in boxing. He operates under the watchful attention of his father (and actually Dempsey’s real father, Greg Bryk) and his uncle Tommy (Noah Dalton Danby), but he feels very divided on his fated boxing career; he’s a quite gentle soul with other interests outside of the sport. This may be partly to do with his uncle moonlighting as an illegal boxer; he therefore sees all of the downsides to this pastime, and knows that Tommy is pretty desperately trying to claw back some income and kudos this way; theirs is not an easy road.
Now, you can no doubt guess that these worlds are going to overlap. We have two young men, each with a different burden of personal pressures, each with markedly different backgrounds, each with different perspectives on boxing and what has brought them to it: there are only so many underground boxing fraternities to go around after all. But boxing definitely operates as a kind of locus for proving oneself, whether imposed or self-selected according to which character we are currently with. Of course this means that there are a number of very graphic fight scenes, with well shot, lit and soundtracked fights; The Fight Machine is, however, a very dialogue-heavy film too, with lots of deliberation on what all of this means. The film also allows itself to dip into black humour, which at first was unexpected: tonally, some of the earlier scenes were a little difficult to read, until it became clear that the film was definitely up for laughing at itself in places, with a whole gamut of eccentric fringe characters and absurd developments. Yes, this is a deliberation on masculinity, it’s just that some of that turns out to be self-deprecatory. See also: the use of fantastical scenes, one of which strongly resembles a scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) – it’s another unexpected element, but considered as part of the whole, it works. Getting hit in the head/imbibing performance enhancers can have an impact on your perception, after all; that’s a reasonable thing to include.
On the whole, the different elements which are put to use here work well towards the film’s overarching pulp fiction feel. This is a discourse about masculinity – with interesting takes on what this means, and how maybe now being ‘a man’ means being fitted for different types of success – but it isn’t simply a po-faced, or reductionist yarn about those themes. It successfully makes the points it sets out to make, and does so creatively in places. The film has a great cast, too: a special mention has to go to Michael Ironside as Lou, the boxing trainer: it’s always good to see him on screen.
The Fight Machine (2022) premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival: watch out for a general release later this year.