Showing in: Circuit Empire





Synopsis:

"Play It to the Bone" stars Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson (as
welterweight boxers Caesar Dominguez and Vince Boudreau, respectively,
who get a final shot at boxing's big time. With only a few hours to get to
Vegas, they take an unexpectedly circuitous road trip through the sizzling
desert with quirky girlfriend Grace Pasic.




Here is the sense, as Ron Shelton’s Play It to the
Bone opens, that something is wrong about this movie. Director Shelton commissions cinematographer Mark Vargo to present a serene,
placid image of Las Vegas at dawn: the pink morning
sky barely clears the surrounding mountaintops, and the glitzy neon of the Strip is dull and sedated.
It’s a hazy image, and it achieves the desired effect
of putting the viewer to sleep before the movie’s even begun. But that’s not what Shelton wants -- hopefully, at least, because it certainly isn’t what the
audience wants. They want a free-spirited sports comedy from the man who’s helmed such successful
outings as Bull Durham and White Men Can’t Jump.
What they get, however, is Shelton’s second boxing
dud, doomed to follow the same dismal course as
1996’s The Great White Hype. Despite the energetic
efforts of its leading actors, Play It to the Bone is
confined by tedious writing and an overbearing sense of anticlimax.




The film is confined because it spends the majority of its running time inside a convertible. Washed-up boxers and friends Cesar Dominguez (Antonio Banderas) and Vince Boudreau (Woody Harrelson) are given an impromptu shot at the middleweight title by sleazy fight promoters Joe Domino (Tom Sizemore) and Hank Goody (Robert Wagner) when the original fighters end up incapacitated the morning of the fight. Cesar and Vince are short on cash and minus a car, though, so Cesar convinces his girlfriend Grace (Lolita Davidovich) to haul them from Los Angeles to  Las Vegas by 6 PM in her lime green ragtop.