“Boxer” is a new Polish sports drama movie that was released on Netflix on September 11. It is directed by a Slovenian director, Mitja Okorn, who has released movies such as “Letters to Santa” and “Planet single”. While there is some effective lighting, camerawork and fighting, the acting choices and hectic changes in emotion left me confused.

This movie is about a Polish guy named Jedzrej who got inspired to be a boxer by his dad. Jedrzej leaves Poland with his wife Kasia to fulfill his dream of becoming a champion in England and one of the best boxers in history.

Jedzrej thought that becoming a champion was an easy task, but turns out he was wrong. He lost several matches, getting knocked out and feeling humiliated. After months of getting denied in boxing gyms, Jedzrej finally gets accepted into an immigration center which includes a gym but struggles to pay it off. His wife pays for it, and eventually they soon overcome that struggle.

After training hard, Jedzrej gets offered a deal by a boxing association that he later agrees to box with them. This marks the start of his success as being a boxer, and his rise to becoming champion.

Lighting and Camerawork

In basically every scene, the director dims the lights and adds filters to make the scene look old, giving me the feeling of being in 1985. When Jedzrej are fighting they focus the brighten the lights on the two fighters and darken the background so the audience can see the fight better. The camera also captures the main characters’ motion when fighting.

Acting
Throughout the movie Eryk Kulm, the actor of Jedrzej, really knows how to act like a boxer and fight like one too. When watching a fighting movie, viewers might not expect for the actor to actually look like they could fight, but In every fight he acts well. Even when he gets knocked out, he knows how to play those parts.

Even though he could act out those fighting scenes, his acting in emotional parts is not that good. He doesn’t express those emotions, for example sometimes you could feel the vibe the director wanted and could tell it’s a good scene for the actor to cry, but in his case he looks emotionless.

Unstable mood
The story moves too fast. Sometimes the character would be happy and minutes later there would be a scene of the character being upset. Despite the plot moving as much as it does, it doesn’t make sense for the characters to switch emotions this much. It’s a bunch of emotions mixed around which sometimes it could cause confusion for the viewers.

Overall, this movie for me is a 7/10; mostly everything was predictable. Half of it was repeated; it was like they were reusing his dad’s past and changing the ending a little, other than that, I recommend it for people who like the drama, but for people who want to see fights, I don’t recommend this movie. The fights barely last. Many of the scenes might be confusing as well because in some scenes the characters have drastic changes.