OxfordPress.com

Grade: C-

Verdict: Down for the count.

Details: Starring Jimmy Smits and Jon Seda. Rated PG-13 for violence, profanity and brief drug content. 1 hour, 57 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: As dramatically subtle as a head-butt, "Price of Glory" retells the age-old story of sons struggling to please a demanding dad. It's watered-down Arthur Miller tarted up with boxing gloves, body blows and a Mexican-American accent.

Jimmy Smits plays one-time boxer Arturo Ortega, whose life revolves around the training of his three sons in the sweaty art of right hooks and uppercuts. See, he doesn't want them to "end up like me" with a bad assembly-line job. You half expect him to talk about having been "a contenduh," like Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront."

The movie borrows some flavor from another Brando flick, owing its father-son, family-business tensions to "The Godfather." The oldest of the three kids is even called Sonny (Jon Seda); the middle one, Jimmy (Clifton Collins Jr.), is, like the "Godfather's" sniveling Fredo, a little weak and self-destructive. Then there's the youngest, 16-year-old Johnny (Ernesto Hernandez), Arturo's favorite and the one he hopes will validate the family name.

"I wouldn't be doing this just for me," Arturo constantly tells his kids, and us. Of course that's exactly what he's doing. It's a familiar tale of a has-been trying to revive failed dreams through his kids. The movie pads out its running time with repetitive scenes of the boys trying to talk sense to their demanding dad, followed by Arturo's response: He screams, pounds lockers, trashes their trophies.

The script (from former New York Times sports columnist Phil Berger) is so busy painting Arturo as a monster, you never quite believe it when a melodramatic, easily foreseen plot twist causes Arturo to see the error of his ways. It's a forced redemption; fate boxes him into a corner.

Going on half an hour past its real dramatic climax, the movie winds up with the typical big match for the title between Sonny and a cocky boxing champion. Director Carlos Avila's workmanlike direction gets some juice out of the face-mulching finale. But the sequence tries to pummel you into forgetting that the main character is really still a monster, temporarily wearing a smiley mask because it's in his best interest. The movie clocks out with a cowardly sucker-punch.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

[an error occurred while processing this directive]