As pro boxing fades into oblivion, it threatens to take with it one of the great recurring characters in movies.
Palooka may be too harsh a term, but in various guises he’s the journeyman fighter, the washed-up champ, the veteran asked to take a dive. On screen, there is something uniquely compelling about him, alone in the harsh glare of the ring, where the canvas-and-rope geometry diagrams stories of honor, defiance, compromise, age.
And what movies he has given us — “On the Waterfront,” “The Set-Up,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” and “Rocky.” The latter two are actually woven into the narrative of “Chuck,” the funny, poignant, and mostly true story of heavyweight fighter and living New Jersey legend Chuck Wepner.
It was Wepner’s 15-round feat of endurance, matched against Muhammad Ali in 1975, that gave Sylvester Stallone the germ of an idea that grew into “Rocky.”