De Niro is back in the boxing ring, but the gloves are off
The great heavyweight of the boxing film has at last moved to the trainer's corner, that sweat-drenched home of grizzled veteran actors and manly pep talks.
Sitting on a rooftop in Cannes shortly after "Hands of Stone" debuted at the French Riviera film festival, De Niro said he was happy to leave the rigors of playing a boxer to the 39-year-old Ramirez.
"Hands of Stone," which the Weinstein Co. plans to release later this year, arrives more than 35 years after De Niro famously played boxer Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull," a movie that De Niro pushed for a then-struggling Martin Scorsese to direct.
The film remains the belt-holder of boxing films, revered for its monochromic cinematography and dark, disturbed mystery.
Hands of Stone," a rags-to-riches tale with the rivalry between Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard (a fleet-of-foot Usher) thrown in, is a more meat-and-potatoes boxing drama, with the benefit of local Panama atmosphere (it was partly shot there.) Variety said it "punches ahead in a conventional, aggressive, no-frills way.
De Niro, 72, might have been expected to leave the boxing ring long ago, but he returned to it in the 2013 comedy "Grudge Match."