The movie Chuck is the story about real life boxer Chuck Wepner. Wepner came to fame for lasting almost 15 rounds with heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali and became the inspiration for the movie Rocky.
Now a lot of “based on a true story” movies seem like they like to embellish a lot of what the subject went through in their lives. Some of it is good to keep the story moving along and some of it is a bit eye-rolling to the point to where it’s white-washing the actions of the main character. Chuck falls into the first category.
Chuck tells the warts-and-all story about the boxer who had some fame but also squandered it. He was a liquor salesman who also boxed. Now, this movie isn’t a boxing movie at all. Yeah it has some boxing in it, but it doesn’t have the classic training montage or anything like that in it. It’s just a part of Wepner’s life. The movie deals with what hurts him more than taking punches in the ring, his problems outside the ring: problems with his wife, him trying to be there for his daughter and him also blowing an audition that could’ve put him in Rocky II. Wepner is not an angel at all, nor is he like the character that was inspired by him, although Wepner did love going around saying he was “the real Rocky” and rode on that fame for a while.
Director Philippe Falardeau captures the look of a 70’s movie really well. The film stock, the costuming and the swagger of it all is there. Let’s hope he can get a bigger movie after this because he does have the talent to tell a good story.
So to anyone who is interested in a small little biopic drama about a boxer, give this one a shot.
Catch Mando on Twitter at @manbat33 when he’s not co-hosting the @TalentedSlacker podcast!