Oscar winner Halle Berry makes her feature film directorial debut with Bruised which is an adequate story about redeeming an MMA fighter who returns to the Octagon after several devastating years which started with a devastating loss in a very one sided match. Bruised is able to deliver a story that has heart even though it does not completely avoid the genre’s stereotypes on cheesy sports stories although compliments go to Berry’s writing.
Training montages, check, there are inner demons to fight and young kids worth saving – Bruised goes the full distance with its cliche arsenal when it comes to underdog drama featuring Jackie Justice, a tough ex-UFC fighter suddenly struggling in life after her boyfriend/manager decided to spoil her unblemished 10-0 run by throwing her into the ring with the opponent she’s cannot handle. Flashforward to a couple of years down the line, Jackie is now a drunk and a cleaner, living with her awful boyfriend who is still very much in control.
When Vincent shoots patients onto the canvas, despite these particulars being parametric in nature, Berry is focused on getting as much as possible with Bruised thanks to all the muck and grime that she packs into the combat and real grit that she instills into the character for us. A character that we want to see win both in the arenas and on screen aswell in her life as a compassionate warrior and a mother.
It might be quite plausible to envision a storyline in which, as Berry would often resonate with, she would play the more conventional fighter’s companion role, who would be guiding the up and coming fighter. However, Bruised brilliantly takes Jackie as an aging fighter who some may feel has wasted her opportunity that Barries takes and turns her into a superhero who still has demons she needs to remove from her life – thus presenting her with a redeeming virtue.
Instead, I found this scenario less of an neither surprise which in turn is a good thing considering how these moments are often handled in movies before going for the kill – Jackie lunges for the cage and the decisive duel with the unrivaled lightweight dominator Lady Killer (MMA fighter Valentina Shevchenko). Jackie’s life is gradually filled with a swarm of new characters, who, it would be reasonable to expect would encourage Jackie and be her motivation in times of self-doubt, but she does not have any. This is where Bruised’s messaging best lands the plane. This is Jackie’s house of fire. No matter the status of the fight, she will be floating in that ring all by herself.
On the one hand, the incident involving the appearance of Jackie’s 6-year-old son, Manny (Danny Boyd Jr.), and the budding interest of a nearby promoter, on the other hand, practically urges, and indeed makes, Jackie to reorganize her life. Awaiting the culmination of the shadow that currently beats her up and the painful experiences in her life, Berry’s Jackie is one tough survivor with pain concealed beneath soft rib cage, yet looking out seems sometimes impossible. This time there is interesting history behind Manny because it was hard to believe a child came back in Jackie’s life only to be a silent character and at times feel like a hot-cold plot device, but Berry knows how to play off it, quite a lot of the time and having Jackie treat Manny as a surrogate for her own parts of traumas. . . .
Hurt isn’t so much about style as saizra, but still dares a classic style as a straight forward dull film diaries or logs. Berry shows a range of histrionics to the point of inducing senseless glee, and sorrow, and ultimately whatever other emotions that have formed in him to enable Jackie’s comeback. But in terms of story plot, there is nothing fascinatingly new in it. The cast is good- about which more of them, and of the blooming directing of Miss Berry not all are such dramas of how Jacki’s comeback plan was surfaced aesthetics less drama than medium.
Verdict
Bruised marks a promising debut for Halle Berry’s directing career as despite its seemingly straightforward film structure filled with dramatic threes (It could do with more surprises though). Both Berry and her co-star Sheila Atim are excellent performers. Danny Boyd Jr. is good too, but his role as the quiet child is somewhat of a cop out, or well, a quick amalgamation of many conflicts. Nevertheless, the dance and the intrusive use of needle drops in order to narrate the film comes in with in it’s structure, however, that is not the case when Berry has her fury poised.
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