Bruised
Halle Berry makes her directorial debut with a bleak, compelling story of second chances.
Bruised all over: Halle Berry
Jackie Justice isn’t just bruised. Brought up in a single-parent household, she was repeatedly raped as a child and channelled her rage into becoming a mixed martial arts champion. But a humiliating, nightmarish defeat pushed her into a downward spiral of drinking, smoking and destructive relationships. Reduced to working as a cleaner for rich white people, her life is turned upside down when she loses her job, wins an impromptu bout with a Russian fighter and discovers that the six-year-old boy she gave up for adoption is now living with her mother…
There’s one thing worse than living in life’s gutter: it’s falling into that gutter from a great height. Jackie Justice was a celebrated champion. However, a series of poor decisions sent her into freefall, landing her into some dark places. And with her technique more than a little rusty, her lungs compromised by her smoking and middle-age having slowed her down, she’s in a poor state to return to the ring. And yet it is the only thing she knows how to do well: to hurt people.
At times, Bruised, from a spec script ten years in the writing, is a hard watch. The expected path is not always taken. But the most unexpected thing about the movie is that it marks the directorial debut of Halle Berry. Representative of the US in the 1986 Miss World pageant (she came fifth), Ms Berry went on to become the only African-American to win the Oscar for best actress – for Monster’s Ball (2001). Twenty years on, she is still confounding her dissenters with a film that showcases both her talents as an actress and as a filmmaker. She looks awful. With her faced puffed up and her teeth protruding under dental guards, her Jackie Justice is a far cry from the Bond girl she played in Die Another Day (2002). But beneath the anger and the ravages of her opponents’ blows, Halle Berry shines.
Recalling the same grimy look of Eminem’s 8 Mile (2002), the film is a bleak, tough experience. Yet its little touches and unexpected moments bring it a distinction above and beyond the standard gutter-to-glory sports drama. And not only does Berry look the part – when she’s not throwing up or sitting half naked on the loo with a cigarette – she has transformed her middle-aged body into a work of lean sculpture. She has also surrounded herself with excellent players, in particular the Anglo-Ugandan actress Sheila Atim as Jackie’s otherworldly trainer known simply as Buddhakan. And just when you think you know where the film is going, Berry and her scenarist Michelle Rosenfarb (who trained as a boxer to aid her research) chuck in a curveball. But such emotive subject matter involving second chances and impossible odds can only work under a sure directorial hand. Halle Berry has spent her career fighting her looks – and still she has the ability to surprise us.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Halle Berry, Adan Canto, Sheila Atim, Adriane Lenox, Valentina Shevchenko, Danny Boyd Jr, Shamier Anderson, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lela Loren, Nikolai Nikolaeff.
Dir Halle Berry, Pro Basil Iwanyk, Brad Feinstein, Guymon Casady, Linda Gottlieb and Erica Lee, Screenplay Michelle Rosenfarb, Ph Frank G. DeMarco, Pro Des Elizabeth J. Jones, Ed Jacob Craycroft and Terilyn A. Shropshire, Music Aska Matsumiya, Costumes Mirren Gordon-Crozier, Dialect coach Denise Woods.
Entertainment 360/Thunder Road Pictures/Romulus Entertainment-Netflix.
131 mins. USA/UK. 2021. Rel: 24 November 2021. Cert. 15 .
