At age 19, George Foreman won the gold medal in boxing at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He became the world heavyweight champion in 1973. He retired soon after due to what was described as a near-death experience in his late 20's. He stayed retired for nearly two decades before returning to the ring at age 45 and getting the championship back. This film depicts that story and how he did it, despite the odds being against him. We get those bullet points rendered efficiently and there's even some exploration of certain themes, but there still is a lot that feels missing that keeps it from being an emotional or even intellectual knockout as other boxing films have.
Khris Davis (Space Jam: A New Legacy and Judas and the Black Messiah) stars as George Foreman, an African American who grew up in the 1960's and 70's in Houston, Texas. He lived in Houston's Fifth Ward, a historically Black neighborhood that's also known as the city's poorest ghetto, a lot of poverty and a lot of crime. George lived with his single mother and half-dozen siblings in what was absolute squalor. Since he was a boy, George has had a temper problem and he would frequently let his rage get the better of him and engage in street fights, or specifically fights at school.
Forest Whitaker (Respect and The Last King of Scotland) co-stars as Charles Broadus aka "Doc," one of the men running the Job Corps facility in Pleasanton, California, a suburb of San Francisco. After nearly getting arrested because he's turned to crime, George sees a TV ad for the Job Corps and decides to sign up for it. George runs afoul of Doc after lashing out in violence and Doc comes close to kicking George out, but Doc is himself a former boxer and decides to train George in the sport to help him channel his rage in more legal and productive ways.
If one isn't a boxing aficionado, there are things that one might learn through watching Doc train George who is an absolute novice and knows nothing about boxing. His education in this film becomes ours. George is criticized for only using his hands and not his head when he's in the ring. Seeing him learn some of the techniques and even some of the craft of the sport beyond punching really hard is intriguing. In fact, there's footwork that becomes instrumental for George that maybe the casual boxing fan might not even know.
Sonja Sohn (Will Trent and The Wire) also co-stars as Nancy Foreman, the mother of George. She gets a job at a diner in Houston yet struggles to keep food on the table for her six or so kids. She even struggles to keep the electricity on. She's able to survive by leaning on her strong sense of faith. Her belief and trust in God are very apparent. Despite this, George becomes averse to religion. He doesn't like to pray.
This leads into one of the narrative hooks of this film. After a brief but very successful career, George stumbles, losing a couple of matches, and eventually quits boxing in order to become a pastor at his own church. He was a veritable atheist. He never went to church, that we see, and once he becomes rich, he's all about fast cars and cheating on his wife. His sudden conversion, which was seemingly prompted by a health scare, needed more explanation and delving. Yet, this film brushes over that conversion so quickly and doesn't examine it at all.
Sullivan Jones (Harlem and The Surrogate) plays Muhammad Ali, the one boxer who not only was George's chief antagonist but later became his friend. So many films have been made about the former Cassius Clay, including Ali (2001), which culminates in the 1974 Zaire fight between him and George Foreman, depicted here as well. There was also the recent One Night in Miami (2020), which was about Muhammad Ali's conversion into the religion of Islam.
Given the scene where George is criticized after he comes back from the Mexico Olympics for not supporting the Black Power incident, it's curious as to why George didn't convert to Islam. During his health scare, which he never has officially diagnosed, he claims to have had "Jesus" in him. That statement is never truly questioned or explained. For example, how does George know it was Jesus? Why not Allah? Or Buddha? George's scene with Muhammad Ali where they sit and talk to each other poolside could have been the perfect place for those questions. Yet, we don't get them.
The film was directed by George Tillman Jr (The Hate U Give and Soul Food). In real-life, Foreman named all his children "George," so it's perhaps appropriate the filmmaker here has the same name. However, Tillman doesn't give us much about Foreman as a pastor. We see George as not a good student in school, so how was he able to pivot to presumably being well versed in the Bible? He had Doc as a mentor for boxing but we don't get who mentored him for preaching, or what his education or training was for being a pastor.
None of his conversion or turning to the church would matter if this film hadn't introduced a blatant contradiction that it only halfheartedly addresses. George's mom, Nancy doesn't see the difference between fighting in the streets and fighting in the ring. Hurting people is hurting people, regardless of where one does it, according to Nancy. George makes the argument that boxing is a sport with rules, so there is a difference. However, his being reborn in the church pushes him to his mom's point-of-view. His going back to boxing after his retirement is a betrayal of that ideal, which he only does for money, so where's his integrity on that point? George is never really confronted with this contradiction or again made to explain his conversion. It's again brushed aside all for the sake of hagiography.
Rated PG-13 for some sports violence.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 9 mins.
In theaters.
