Champion: Mark Robson

You want a review for Mark Robson's Champion (1949)? Here it is: its mediocre. There. That's all I have to say. If you really want to watch a great classic boxing movie, go watch Body and Soul (1947) or the criminally under-rated The Set-Up (1949). But, of course, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I didn't write more than just a few lines. I guess I should try and summarize the plot, but that's hard to do because it's so generic! Midge Kelly and his brother travel to California to help operate a restaurant that they bought. However, they discover that the seller was a con-man who ripped them off. So, desperate to find work, Midge starts boxing. If you've seen any other boxing films, you can guess where this is headed: he finds a grizzled old coach who trains him, he becomes the champion, his ego swells, and he isolates himself from everyone who loved and supported him when he was a nobody. The really frustrating thing about Champion is that I can't dismiss it as a bad movie. There are decent aspects of it. Kirk Douglas does a fine job as Midge and some of the boxing sequences are engaging. But everything else about it is simply tedious. Is it a good movie? No. Is it a bad movie? No. It's somewhere in between.

5/10