‘The Bleeder’ Toronto Review: Lovable Boxing Movie Shows the Real Rocky

[...] the boxing drama, which tells the life story of a coulda-been contender who became the real-life inspiration for Rocky Balboa, works a bit like the pugilist at its heart.

The film — which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival this week along with its similarly punchy boxing-flick brother “Bleed for This” — stars Liev Schreiber as Chuck Wepner, scrapper schnook from Bayonne, New Jersey.

A low-level enforcer, liquor salesman and lovable meathead, Wepner rather improbably found himself going up against Muhammad Ali in a 1975 heavyweight bout; even more improbably, Wepner went toe to toe with the Greatest for 15 rounds, losing on a technical knockout with only seconds left in the match.

Wepner, for all his talents in the ring, was also a lout, a lush and an unrepentant philanderer, while “The Bleeder,” for all its winsome verve, is absolutely slathered in plodding exposition and broad-strokes story beats telegraphed from a mile away.

When Wepner is arrested in the film’s cocaine-fueled fall-from-grace second half, he pipes up in voiceover to remind us, “that was a real low point,” as if the look on Schreiber’s face, and the somber notes on the soundtrack and sheer fact that it’s a fall-from-grace beat in a rise-and-fall narrative wasn’t enough.

Schreiber, who is so often cast for his brooding intensity, is clearly delighted to play this lovable meathead (and it’s clear that he had a strong hand in crafting the role — he also shares producer and co-writer credits).

Comedians Jim Gaffigan and Jason Jones do great character turns as Wepner’s sleazebag entourage, and Ron Perlman is a hoot as the boxer’s Yiddish-spouting trainer.

Little of “The Bleeder” feels particularly fresh, but then why should it, when it tells of stale tobacco and cheap cologne and does so rather well? “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” says a character at one point in a line that about sums up the film.