MA 15+ (97 minutes)
In some screen fights the antagonists inflict so much physical damage on one another that they seem doomed to spend what little life they have left in a vegetative state. Yet they pop up in the next scene with nothing more telling than a Band-Aid under one eye.
Daniel MacPherson in Beast.Stan
Beast is not one of those films. During its production, its star Daniel MacPherson sustained the injuries to prove it. Set in Port Kembla on the NSW south coast, it’s about the ferocious business of mixed martial arts. McPherson’s Patton James does not step into a boxing ring. His workplace is an octagonal cage where the fighters augment their boxing skills with kicking, wrestling and grappling moves co-opted from judo, jiu-jitsu and the ever-growing global potpourri of competitive combat sports.
And in the middle of it all is the gladiator himself – Russell Crowe, cast as Patton’s trainer, looking rather older and heavier than he did 21 years ago in his own boxing movie, Cinderella Man. Directed by Ron Howard, it was a biopic about James J. Braddock, an Irish-American boxer who became a light heavyweight champion during the Great Depression. When his boxing career began he was struggling to earn a living as a dockworker, which gives him a lot in common with Patton. He’s working on a fishing trawler where his meagre pay depends on the size of the catch, along with the volatile temper of his vindictive skipper.