Butler's Cinema Scene

Liev Schreiber as boxer Chuck Wepner

“CHUCK” My rating: B

98 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Watching a familiar actor utterly lose him/herself in a role is one of the deep pleasures of moviegoing.

Liev Schreiber makes that transformation in “Chuck.” But then so do Naomi Watts (a.k.a. Mrs. Schreiber), Elizabeth Moss, Ron Perlman and Jim Gaffigan.

The subject of director Philippe Falardeau’s bracing little film (the screenplay is credited to Jeff Feuerzeig, Jerry Stahl, Michael  Cristofer and Schreiber) is Chuck Wepner, the  New Jersey club fighter known affectionately/sardonically as the “Bayonne Bleeder” for his willingness to be beaten to a pulp.  (In fact, “Chuck’s” original title was “The Bleeder.” Wish they’d stuck with it.)

In 1975 the virtually unknown Wepner got a crack at taking away Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight belt in a bout conceived and advertised by promoter Don King as a blatant racial  confrontation.

Werner’s fight strategy was pretty simple: “I could’t hit  him. I figured I’d wear him down with my face.”

Wepner didn’t win, but he lasted for more than 14 bloody rounds against the world’s best, sending the champ to the mat once and losing by a TKO with only 19 seconds left in the fight.

Out in Hollywood a struggling actor named Sylvester Stallone was so inspired by Wepner’s David-and-Goliath story that he wrote a screenplay called “Rocky.”

“Chuck” isn’t really a boxing film. Rather, it is simultaneously a fact-based yarn about the ever-widening fallout from the Ali-Wepner fight and a character study of a Palooka whose a brief brush with fame went straight to his head.

Schreiber’s Chuck, who narrates his story, is by most accounts a pretty average guy. He worked as a nightclub bouncer and as a debt collector for a loan shark, though his heart wasn’t in it. (“I was never good at roughing guys up. Too nice.”)

His wife Phyllis (Moss) is the family breadwinner, thanks to her gig with the U.S. Post Office. Chuck shows his appreciation by writing heartfelt doggerel about her virtues.

Eventually an admirer lands Chuck a liquor distributorship.  It’s an OK living, but it provides way too many opportunities to hang around bars and pick up other women. (It also provides an opportunity for a soundtrack filled with disco hits.)

The Ali fight provides Chuck with bragging rights and celebrity status.  Once “Rocky” becomes an Oscar-winning phenomenon, everyone assumes he must have sold his story to the  movies for big bucks.  In fact, Chuck didn’t earn a cent off the film.

Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber

And the ensuing resentment and humiliation (Chuck tries to capitalize on his fleeting notoriety by setting up fights with  a movie grizzly bear and wrestler Andre the Giant) pushes our man into ever-deeper degradations.  Not just women and wild living, but cocaine distribution.

Schreiber is terrifically good at finding the human core beneath the bad behavior (without that Chuck would come off either as a louse or a pathetic loser). And he does it without breaking a sweat, slipping effortlessly into Chuck’s lack of self awareness. But he’s only one of the film’s attractions.

Perlman nails it as Chuck’s manager. Gaffigan is  both funny and infuriating as Chuck’s dopey best friend, hanger-on and enabler.  Watts sinks so deeply into the role of the barmaid who becomes Chuck’s second wife that she’s practically unrecognizable. And Michael Rapaport has a terrific late appearance as Chuck’s estranged brother.

Director Falardeau (“Monsieur Lazhar,” “The Good Lie”) recognizes that as much as this is one man’s story it is also about the world from which he comes, and he exhibits an appreciation of working-class life reminiscent of Jonathan Demme’s “Melvin & Howard.”  There’s may be nothing particularly profound in Chuck Wepner’s story, but ultimately “Chuck” affirms the decency of the average Joe.

It’s just that sometimes it takes a while to get there.

| Robert W. Butler