Netflix Pick – Hands of Stone
Your weekly Netflix Pick is 2016’s Hands of Stone. It’s crazy that we live in a world where Robert De Niro and Edgar Ramirez can make a movie, a biopic at that, and it grosses a relatively meager 4 million dollars. It’s even more astonishing that it didn’t bring in much money, but it’s good. A lot of the readers of this write up may not even have been aware of the movie, we’re here to set that straight.
Hands of Stone is first and foremost a biopic about Roberto Duran (Edgar Ramirez). If you’re a fan of boxing, you’ve heard of this man. He first came on the scene professionally in 1968 at the young age of 16 years old. He boxed for an incredible thirty four years before retiring. Duran teams up with Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro). Arcel is probably also well known to boxing fans as one of the most successful and well liked coaches to ever touch the sport.
Despite, or maybe because of, his modest upbringing Duran is an incredibly hard worker. He puts his bias of American’s aside when meeting Arcel since Arcel is a champion maker. The two form a good friendship through the course of the movie as Duran climbs the ranks. The height of his career comes not long into the film when Duran faces off against Sugar Ray Leonard (surprisingly played by Usher Raymond. Yes, that Usher).
The biopic is done more traditionally. It seems as of late many of these stories focus on a single event in a great person’s life and give a narrow scope. While this may be interesting it always seems to leave the audience wanting more. Unless the point of the movie is to sell an accompanying book this approach has been received with mixed results.
Hands of Stone goes for it. It tells the whole story. It gives insight and depth to Roberto Duran. Even at Duran’s worst you feel and root for the man. It helps that Duran seems to be an all around good person. His personal life has its ups and downs, closely associated with his career but all things considered he is a good man. Duran saw himself as a Robin Hood figure. He gave much back to the poor in his community and almost never rubbed his success in people’s faces.
Edgar Ramirez has been an active member of the American film community for just over a decade. He is a powerful actor who disappears into roles. He was also something of an imposing force on the screen but along with many boxing legends portrayed in movies its very clear Ramirez worked for the role. The physicality as well as mental fortitude put onto the screen are impressive to say the least. His performance is understated and engaging.
Robert De Niro is a film legend. Always will be. A late motif in his career has been some softball performances in some rainy Sunday afternoon TV movies, at best. While his turn as Ray Arcel isn’t career defining, it is classic De Niro. All the typical mannerisms are present but so is, at least a piece of, that star quality that made him jump off the screen in Raging Bull or Deer Hunter. Arcel was a phenomenal man who took on a lot to help Duran. His sacrifice is made clear and even the closing credits summary of the real man will give you pause.
Not only did Ramirez’s dedication deliver a command performance and impressive physique but it helped the choreographer’s job. The fight scenes in the film are outstanding. His form looks on point and the snap editing doesn’t jar the audience out of the fight. The cuts to stuntman go completely unnoticed, if there are any. Ramirez is front and center in the ring and giving it his all.
Hands of stone was shot with a relatively small budget for the scope of the movie. I only know this by looking it up. I was looking for the element that made this such a short release that brought in next to nothing. I was wondering why such a phenomenal film hit Netflix straight away. No offense to the amazing streaming platform but that isn’t the norm for big movies (exceptions aside of course).
I had to look up the budget because no part of the film feels low budget or small in scope. Recreating Panama from decades past, recreating the fights, the clarity of the video, and the finesse of the editing are all A-List quality.
Hands of Stone is a fantastic movie that is also a lesson in our saturated marketplace. The market place being saturated isn’t as negative as it sounds. It just means that for the 8 measly dollars we pay per month we can stumble into movies of this quality with these amazing actors in it.
