Filmology Rating: 2 out of 4

Hollywood has always loved a good sports story, especially one featuring a foreign underdog taking on the American hero.  Hands of Stone follows the life and career of Roberto Duran, a star boxer from Panama, from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s.  Duran’s career came to a climax when he faced Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980 but famously quit in the middle of the fight.

Hands of Stone stars Edgar Ramirez as Roberto Duran, Robert De Niro as his legendary trainer Ray Arcel, and Usher Raymond IV as Sugar Ray Leonard.  Everyone involved in the film delivered adequate though not outstanding performances, and the plot was a little “tried and true,” providing little new to get emotional over, which it seemed was the end goal of the filmmakers.  Edgar Ramirez is not a selling point for me, as he was lackluster in Joy  and Point Break.  De Niro is hit or miss, though he seemed more interested in this project than most of his more recent endeavors.  Usher is charismatic enough that he could have just stood there and smiled through the whole film and he would have been tolerable.  

With a runtime of 1 hour and 51 minutes, Hands of Stone feels like it lasts two and a half hours.  There are very compelling moments but far more scenes that drag on and feel like they take forever to end.  We face the familiar tropes of the star athlete starting from nothing, the star athlete finding a beautiful wife and having lots of babies, the star athlete finding a little fame and quickly dissolving into a world of money, sex, and drugs, and the star athlete redeeming himself after his wife and trainer pull him out of his downward spiral.  Hands of Stone tries to add another layer to the story by including the political struggles facing Panama from the 1960s to the 1980s, with America claiming the Panama canal and Panamanians resisting these claims.  

The mediocre performances, the forced emotions, and the lackluster plot left me feeling disappointed and underwhelmed.

Rating: Rent It

-Megan