Rocky Versus Jake LaMotta!

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2015)

After many years of wishful thinking, we finally get to see the ultimate showdown of Rocky versus Jake LaMotta....to a degree. Obviously, the characters in Grudge Match are not the same characters listed above, but they are played by the same actors, thirty plus years later. The film itself is actually a very good film....if you can take older men with no shirts. But the film is an excellent drama and is a lot funnier that I thought it would be. There were some great, though somewhat cheesy lines of dialog. I like how the film is not just about boxing, but about the characters. In fact, the actual boxing scenes are relegated to only like twenty minutes, if that.
Peter Segal's film is about two Pittsburgh boxers: Henry Sharp and Billy McDonnen who are the worst of boxing enemies. Sharp decides to retire early after being defeated by McDonnen. Thirty years later, fate comes a-calling when a promoter named Dante Slate Jr. offers each of them a good deal to bring one last fight to the table: to fight a grudge match.
I thought the film had fine acting. Robert De Niro is a very talented actor and it was nice to see him back in the ring, 33 years after Raging Bull. Sylvester Stallone managed to do a good job bringing back his inner Rocky. Kevin Hart added a funny presence as the promoter, Dante Jr. Alan Arkin added lots of humor, admittedly most about old-age, to his elegant performance. Kim Basinger was very good as Sly's former lover and Jon Bernthal as De Niro's long-lost son.
Overall, Grudge Match is actually a quite humorous and moving film that managed to stay entertaining. It doesn't reach the scale of Raging Bull and Rocky, but it's not meant to. That does not stop the film from making some excellent inside references to those classics. A very entertaining movie, though I could use an ending that was not so abrupt. I rate this film 9/10.