Two Fists, One Heart (2009)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Blistering performances.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is one of the most costly flops of the 21st century in Australian film making. Apparently the producer and director could not see that the film has a terrible title which makes it sound like a kung fu movie, nor the fact that the storyline and depiction of characters was tedious and ugly. Costing $9m in Australian dollars might not sound expensive, but given it would have to gross $30m to see that money returned, well, someone ought to be in jail. The film never had any chance of being a success and now sadly only exists as a lame TV gig and a DVD that will never rent. TWO FISTS ONE HEART apparently is from some obscure book about a cranky man forcing his wincing son to be a boxer. For god's sake. The son moans about it all and goes reluctantly thru training until the big Rocky-like match ion the last reel. By then we have seen suburban behaviour that includes street vomiting, whiny girlfriends and nightclub boor drivel. The poster did not even have a logo, but some pen scrawl that if you squinted, read TWO FISTS ONE HEART. At one stage, apparently in some dramatic doorway petulance at home, Dad bellows 'You've got two fists but only one heart!", well, der, haven't we all. Another cliché moment was the kid's Mother moaning 'But he's your father!" in another stupendous statement of obviousness. Hopelessly out of touch with the film going public this TV level nonsense barely ran 3 weeks and vanished back to the lab where all the reels were wiped clean and another emulsion slopped over it and a newer film was printed on the 35mm stock. Not even in the lamest DVD stores did it have a profile. Silly, misinformed and clumsily handled, it only served as a tax write off for the film distributor. Technically quite well made but could easily have been a TV pic costing 1/3 of what was wasted here.

This film is a case of what could have been. Several years ago John Polson, after having read Fazio's script, showed real interest in directing the film. Had he done so, the film would not only have had a talented director at the helm but it would have attracted international interest as well due to Polson's fame. Polson drew the line with Fazio starring in the picture and the writer was determined to star in his own film, so the two parted company.Enter Shawn Seet as director and the result is a film that, for the most part, drags on to the point of losing the viewer's interest. The development of both the plot and relationships between most of the characters was tedious. It was too obvious what was going to happen.I thought the film also suffered from a mish mash of acting talent with both stand out performances and cringe inducing ones. Fantastichini, Amalm, and Marais were all good in their roles, however Fazio and some of his mates could do with more acting lessons. Polson obviously saw what was coming.The one real saving grace of the film however are the boxing scenes. Of all the boxing movies I have seen, these are the most realistic. Apart from Amalm, all the people in these scenes are real boxers who are actually going toe to toe with one another. Not even Raging Bull had more realism in the fight scenes. Unfortunately more was needed between these scenes.

The opening frames of Two Fists, One Heart, an Australian boxing film by Shawn Seet, shows an Italian father named Joe (Ennio Fantastichini) holding his son under water and then bringing him up to the surface. The mentality is to provide his son with strong lungs for when he becomes a boxer. Many years later Joe still attempts to hold this smothering grasp over his son Anthony (Daniel Amalm from Underbelly), running a gym and teaching boxing. Yet Anthony does not seem to be particularly interested in getting into the ring. He has many flaws in his fighting technique but is more concerned with his job as a bouncer at a nightclub. Anthony also a raging tendency to fight outside the ring, engaging in punch ups to solve problems. This is most affecting when he forms a relationship with a university student (Jessica Marais) who he protects one evening.As with so many Australian films, this is a wildly uneven production that tries extremely hard to be taken seriously as a film of poignancy and depth. Unfortunately it is neither of those things as there have been so many boxing films – the most impressive being Million Dollar Baby - that the film struggles to say anything new. Where Eastwood's masterpiece used boxing as a powerful metaphor for one woman's tenacity, Two Fists attempts to draw a similar line between the action in the ring and a young man's attitude of dealing with problems. This is not a new theme as there have been many films that have explored the allure of violence and the release in provides for men, such as Fight Club and A History of Violence. Worse is that the film is very one dimensional in its exploration of violence and never wholly conclusive. There will be some that will relate with this notion of anger, but the film fails to draw any significant consequences for the main character Anthony. Early in the film Anthony must sort out a stolen car and proceeds with his mate to deliver a message by punching out the goons and then stealing a car. Later he punches out someone in the street who makes a suggestive remark about his girlfriend. Though violent, moments like these feel slightly undramatic and insubstantial as there does not seem to be any consequence. No one ever bothers to ring the police here. Rather it is meant to act as an infringement of the relationship of Anthony and his girlfriend. You can guess how she is going to react – and she has the obligatory view of seeing him on TV at the end – but most disappointingly it is inconclusive as we never know the real ending of their relationship and ultimately this subplot becomes insignificant.For a film that is so blatantly anti-violence, the film's final third may as well have been constructed by a different set of filmmakers. Channelling every Rocky cliché, not only does the films finale – which includes the obligatory title fight – feel rushed (Anthony races from not training at all to a title fight in minutes) but it is also numbingly predictable and borders on pure cheese. It is almost insulting for a film to be so anti-violent, only to glorify men pounding each other in the ring. What exactly where they trying to say for ninety percent of the movie? The fight scenes do not hold a candle to either Million Dollar Baby or Cinderella Man – the opening sequence in particularly is shot in far too close and convoluted. No matter how loud the cracking blow of a fist is made to sound, there is no tension in any of the fight scenes, or at least a sense of exhilaration. In its favour though, at least many of the pub and club scenes, while brief, are very authentic in their depiction.The performances are fairly mixed too. Anthony is a difficult character to critique in some ways. On one hand he does not seem like a particularly fresh conception. He is an aggressive young man, slightly moronic, frustrated by his father but with a softer side. It is nothing we haven't seen before. You could take it that he is just an average and simple guy who does not have much complexity in his life however. Daniel Amalm's delivery of his lines is okay, but not particularly impressive, the same with Jessica Marais, who we know little about apart from being a student. Her role lacks depth. Ennio Fantastichini is terrific though, in a very believable and radical role, where he showcases a tradition of anger, determination but eventually vulnerability. He is one of the more interesting characters in the film.Two Fists One Heart is a mildly entertaining film until its last third. It is material we have seen many times before – performed much better - though at its core the father and son relationship is an asset to the film and significantly buoyed by Ennio Fantastichini's performance. The Australian flavour of the film also makes it a bit more engaging and true to watch. Yet everything else in the film is by the numbers and black and white that it becomes a cliché mess at the end, where you do not particularly care about the characters, leaving it as 'one note' rather than a whole heart.