The Set-Up
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Movie Reviews of The Set-Up
Movie Review: Naturalistic Tribute to Boxing. Compelling Real-Time Drama.
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Set-Up" is memorable for being a great boxing film and for being one of the few films to successfully tell a story in real time. It was adapted by screenwriter Art Cohn from Joseph Moncure March's 1928 narrative poem. The film is a tight 72 minutes long, and so is the action. Director Robert Wise shows us the time on various clocks every once in a while to remind viewers that the film is progressing in real time. Bill "Stoker" Thompson (Robert Ryan) is a 35-year-old boxer past his prime and past having any reasonable hope of a title fight or great glory in the ring. But he's a fighter, so he keeps on fighting for moderate success. His wife Julie (Audrey Totter) can't stand the beatings any more, fears for her husband's life, and wishes he would retire. Stoker's manager Tiny (George Tobias) cuts a deal with a local racketeer named Little Boy (Alan Baxter) for Stoker to take a dive after 2 rounds with Tiger Nelson (Hal Fieberling). But Tiny wants the pay-off for himself and has so little confidence in his fighter that he neglects to tell Stoker of the deal.
Actor Robert Ryan was an intercollegiate heavyweight boxing champion when he was at Dartmouth, so there's no question of authenticity in the ring. Robert Wise uses 3 cameras, 2 outside the ring and one inside, to capture the drama and violence of the fight. "The Set-Up" is in real time, so the fight between Stoker and Tiger Nelson lasts about 15 minutes. Much of the film is spent with the boxers preparing for their fights in the dressing room. Stoker's is the last fight of the evening, so he listens, just as we do, to the fighters talk about women, religion, their careers and aspirations, and encourage and insult one another. We see a young fighter nervous over his first fight and an old one overconfident from, perhaps, too many blows to the head. The audience can feel the tension as injured boxers are dragged in and treated as the others gaze on solemnly. This is really a wonderful tribute to the world of boxing and its athletes.
Robert Ryan was a versatile and sympathetic actor who could play a thoughtful everyman hero, as he does here, or an irredeemable brute, as he did 2 years earlier in "Crossfire", for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Ryan imbues Stoker with a hope and candor that the audience could scarcely not find sympathetic. Audrey Totter, as Stoker's wife Julie, says very little, but we can see her thoughts in her expressions and behavior as she wanders around worrying about her husband and contemplating their future. Both of these performances are genuinely touching without being sentimental. "The Set-Up" also cleverly follows certain bloodthirsty spectators from their entrance into the Paradise City sports arena through the last fight. And that's tabloid photographer WeeGee (Arthur Fellig) on the bell, timing the fight.
The DVD (Warner Brothers 2004): The only bonus feature is an audio commentary by directors Robert Wise and Martin Scorsese. The commentary is sporadic, and the 2 men were recorded separately, but it is interesting. Wise shares information on how he got the job, technique, cast, researching the film, story, and filming the fight. Martin Scorsese is a great admirer of "The Set-Up" and took some inspiration from the film in making "Raging Bull". He talks about the film's themes as he sees them: fatalistic allegory, window on boxing subculture, and "painting of skid row", as well as its hyper-realist "naturalistic" style, and compares its fight to those in "Raging Bull". Subtitles for the film are available in English, French, and Spanish.
Movie Review: A Five Star Knockout
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a review for THE SET-UP (1949) directed by Robert Wise.
THE SET-UP was originally an RKO release but is now on a WB DVD.
What really is a simple. basic boxing story in THE SET -UP
is made into a life or death situation for at least a couple of
the characters involved in the action.
Stoker Thompson, played by Robert Ryan, is a just about over
the hill boxer who wants one more chance to prove to himself, as well
as just about everyone, that he was and still has the real stuff of champions.
Even though the upcomiing match that means nothing more than another
stepping stone to a glamourous young contender who is owned by gangster
"Lttle Boy."
Ultimately, the fix is on but no one lets Stoker in on that little secret and
Stoker, for any reason you can think of, let's start with honesty and resentment,
fights like a wounded tiger against the kid contender, named "Tiger" Nelson.
After a few very exciting rounds, Stoker pulls the win out of his hat and finds
out minutes later in the locker room that Little Boy expected --make that paid for-- a very different decisicion. And Little Boy and a couple of his large friends
are very unhappy with Stoker Thompson and plan on letting him know it
in a very forceful manner ASAP.
I think that THE SET-UP is about honesty, integrity and the ability
to recover from mistakes or bad choices. But mostly I think at times,
at least, THE SET -UP is about loneliness, and how tough it can be when
even your mate just isn't there when he or she is needed most.
And how what you have learned throughout your possibly not outwardly
successful life can still help carry you through even though all others
have abandoned you or say that you are wrong again.
There are many noir aspects to THE SET UP, the great cinematography,
the really fine and at times frightening story, the locker room parade of different fighters in various stages of their careers--all of whom could have been or might symbolize Stoker one day--the somewhat disillusioned
attitude displayed by Stoker Thompson's wife Julie, finely played by Audrey
Totter.
For some reason Julie does not want to see her husband get punched silly
for chump change and see him slip down one more rung of the boxing
ladder, a ladder she fervently wishes he'd get off soon.
The portraits of a few of the boxing audience members, some silly, some sad,
also adds greatly to the atmosphere of THE SET-UP. But mostly the noirish feel
of THE SET -UP I think is illustrated by the bottom of the barrel, last stop setting
of the boxing arena and the little hotel and businesses situated across the
street from the arena. Businesses with names like "The Paradise," and "Cozy Hotel."
And out of this bleak setting a man who is just about finished and hoping
for one last chance seems to find it and find himself when no one else
even considers that such a thing is possible for Stoker Thompson.
This movie does not really have a happy ending in a conventional manner,
at least. But there is the hint of new possiblities for both Stoker and Julie.
THE SET-UP is a terrific film, one of the best of any genre or category that you could think of.
Five Stars.
Movie Review: a boxing film with the whole dark world of noir under its surface
Summary: 5 Stars
My noir-viewing continues with this almost impossibly restrained and realistic portrayal of an hour and a half in the life of nearly washed-up small time boxer Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan), still dreaming the dream of getting back into the big time at 35 while worrying his long-suffering wife Julie (Audrey Totter). The film plays out in real time, a year after Hitchock pulled the same feat with ROPE, though there are no special camera tricks or extremely long takes here, and in fact I wasn't aware of this plot device until just about the end of the film, engrossed as I was by the action.
Ryan is rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors, and I've been seeing a lot of him lately as I've been exploring the noir cycle; if he didn't star in more noirs than anyone else, I'm not sure who did. The tall, slender-verging on gaunt frame is bulked up a little bit here, but the intelligent yet dulled and weary eyes and the disgust with the world are the same. His character is more sympathetic in this story than in most of them, but fatally deluded as any good noir protagonist should be, although not about the obvious; what the film boils down to in a nutshell is that it doesn't matter if he's good enough to beat the other guy -- he can still lose in the end simply by believing that he's got a chance, and by ignoring those voices -- from his girlfriend, his trainer, his manager -- telling him that winning isn't what he should be looking for.
The climactic boxing sequence is extraordinarily well done, and quite violent by 1940s standards. Milton Krasner's photography and Roland Gross's editing are justly celebrated, but attention should be paid to the wonderful gallery of faces surrounding the ring, and the changing tides of opinion on the fate of the two men slugging it out -- the has-been Ryan and the much younger but cocky and somewhat stupid Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor) -- and of the men putting up the money, who have decreed that Stoker should fall, but neglected to tell him.
The atmosphere of the film mirrors the boxer's place on the crossroads between success and failure; most of the characters, even the sharply-drawn but tiny parts belonging to those at ringside, seem on their way up or down -- most are heading down. The unnamed city, too, looks once-great. When Julie decides at last minute not to go to the fight, she tears up her ticket while standing on a rather nice bridge on the edge of a small park, over the railroad tracks, dreaming of being taken away; it's any medium-sized city that's not too far from a bigger one, not too far from bigger dreams. At the end of the film, those dreams seem like bitter pills to swallow, bad medicine in a bad world.
Movie Review: Robert Wise's Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
THE SET-UP is probably the least known, and maybe the best, of the trio of boxing movies to come in the late 1940s. The other two, of course, are BODY AND SOUL and THE CHAMPION.
Unlike those fine movies THE SET-UP'S protagonist, boxer Robert Ryan, isn't a young pug riding his fists of stones to fame and fortune. He's a thirty-five year old fighter caught somewhere in the last round of an undistinguished career, a nobody on the bottom of a fight card in Paradise City. About all he's got left to dream about is squeezing enough out of whatever remains of his career to buy a cigar stand. His loving wife, Audrey Trotter, has had her fill of seeing him beat up. One more win, Ryan tells her, and I'll be in line for a rematch and a payoff big enough to afford....
Like the other boxing movies, Ryan's fate is in the hands of the big men with fat cigars, the ones who set up a win for an up and coming boxer by setting up a convincing dive by his over-the-hill opponent. Money changes hands. Everyone's in on it except for the guy who's supposed to take the fall, the guy who's one punch away from that cigar stand.
Although THE SET-UP is a highly entertaining movie, it carries a heavy dose of allegorical cynicism. Ryan's character doesn't bother to hide the look of disgust on his face as he surveys the bloodthirsty crowd upon entering the auditorium. Ryan's Everyman has no illusion and the humblest of dreams, unaware that the fat boys with the big cigars have negotiated a foreclosure on it. Ryan, forty at the time this movie was made, was a boxer in college. He's utterly convincing, in and outside the ring. Although his career would lead him to play more character than lead roles, playing both good guys and bad, he has more than enough of whatever it takes to carry this movie.
Director Robert Wise delivers a lean, tough, and immediate movie. Ears cauliflower and foreheads bulge with long healed scar tissue. Wise doesn't waste a frame or a gesture. What doesn't push the plot forward services the downcast mood.
The commentary track features Wise and director Martin Scorsese. Wise must have been in his mid-eighties when he recorded the track. His mind is clear and, as an old movie fan, I consider it a privilege to listen to him comment on one of his masterpieces. Scorsese adds insight into a film he obviously loves as well, although his enthusiasm sometimes runs away a bit and it's a little difficult to follow some of his learned praise.
Movie Review: Gritty boxing movie; superb cinematography & DVD transfer
Summary: 5 Stars
This review is for the 2004 Warner Brothers DVD.
The Set-Up is a real-time boxing movie. In other words, it's a 72 minute movie that shows a continuous 72 minute story. The star is Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) who's a 35 year old boxer in the twilight of his less than glorious career. Even though he's taken some bad beatings of late, he still remains confident that he still has a promising future ahead of him. The plot involves Stoker's manager accepting a $50 bribe that will insure that Stoker will lose tonight's fight against a young and up-and-coming boxer. But since the manager is too cheap and too certain that Stoker will lose anyway, he fails to let Stoker know that a fix is on. The rest of the movie progresses on with gripping suspense and drama with plenty of boxing action.
I really liked this movie a lot. The name of the town where the story takes place is Paradise City, but its the furthest thing from utopia. The dingy boxing arena is in an old area of town surrounded with rundown hotels, bars, dance joints and arcades. Just about all of the main characters and the boxing patrons in the movie are unlikable people, but the underlying theme for everyone is optimism - trying to win an expensive item in an arcade game, or placing a bet on a boxing match or winning a boxing match - all hoping for a better future.
The DVD transfer is superb. There are virtually no signs of film deterioration throughout the entire film. The black and white tones are pure and the picture is razor sharp. The use of shadows and directed light is magnificantly done. The dark, urban setting works magic in this film. There is bonus commentary by director Robert Wise plus added comments by Martin Scoresese.
PLEASE NOTE: Before buying this DVD, consider buying the Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 1 which contains this movie plus four other highly recommended movies at a very reasonable price.
Movie: A-
DVD Quality: A