Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I went into this film with some wariness knowing that it was a made for TV movie, and as such, it's good but not great. The story itself seems to be told fairly accurately, but when doing sports movies, film makers ought to be more attentive to supplying dates and historical perspective to what's going on. The picture opens with a 1936 Madison Square Garden match, but when it comes time for the anticipated first meeting between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, well when exactly was it? The same holds true for the Braddock - Louis title fight (6/22/37) and the Louis defense against Schmeling exactly a year later (6/22/38). I know the dates because I just looked it up, but some mention in the picture would have been welcome.Probably the best aspect of the movie, at least for me, was the way it handled the issues of race and in Schmeling's case, the propaganda value of a German upholding the concept of the Master Race. To his credit, Schmeling defied the Nazi regime as ably as he could, and had he been a mediocre athlete, probably would have suffered a meteoric fall from the public eye. The German champ defied Hitler and Goebels by remaining loyal to his Jewish manager, and on the flip side, Joe Jacobs (David Paymer) had to endure accusations of being a traitor to the American cause during the run up to World War II.As for Louis, the film barely scratched the surface of his life and career, but then again, the focus was on the rivalry between two accomplished athletes. Even so, the real life Joe Louis was a notorious womanizer, something that was barely hinted at when his wife Marva (Siena Goines) confronted one of her husband's girlfriends. Often in these sports biopics, sensationalism runs just the opposite, as in 1992's "The Babe" on the career of Babe Ruth starring John Goodman.In my review of the 1953 film "The Joe Louis Story", I voiced the opinion that a modern day treatment of the former champion, if done right, could be a sensational film. Unfortunately this one misses the mark with some eclectic casting and a look that's just a bit too flashy and modern looking in it's representation of the 1930's. Nevertheless it's a watchable story and a fairly good springboard to the careers of Louis and Schmeling for anyone interested in digging deeper.

The true story of the relationship between world heavyweight champion Joe Louis and European heavyweight champion Max Schmelling is one of the "truth is stranger than fiction" variety. In their first meeting in 1936, a young Joe Lewis was the leading contender for a title shot while the 10 years older German Schmelling was the European champion. When underdog Schmelling defeated Lewis he reluctantly became a propaganda icon for Hitlers regime. Lewis at that time was the pride and hope of the "Negro race" (as people of African lineage were then called by decent people), but "white" America apparently was wary of him. After he beat Schmelling in the second fight Lewis became an idol of all America, while the embarrassed Nazis made Schmelling a non-entity in Nazi Germany. During the war Schmelling was made an ordinary soldier in the German Army, while Lewis' tour in the US Army was as a celebrity used for troop morale. Later, after Lewis retired undefeated, he learned that he owed a huge amount of money to the IRS and had to go back into boxing to try to rid himself of the debt. (The film does not get into the details, but supposedly Lewis, who was not well educated, had relied on his manager and promoter to handle his finances, including preparing tax returns.) But Lewis was too old now and was humiliated in the ring. He then took a variety of demeaning jobs in an attempt to pay off the debt, which he never was able to accomplish. The movie does not address the disgraceful issue of why no U.S. President gave him some sort of a pardon forgiving this American hero of the debt. In the meantime, Schmelling has a phoenix-like reversal of fortune when Coca Cola sought him out to use him in a campaign to capture the German market for its product.So the basis for an interesting movie was there. The problem was in the implementation.The film seemed badly paced and choppy. Many of the scenes seemed to me needlessly drawn out, with the camera sometimes lingering on objects, such as a railroad train for no reason that I can think of. The parts of the film I liked best are the scenes in with Schmelling (Til Schweiger) and his actress wife (Peta Wilson) in Germany.As was noted in another comment, the actors looked nothing like the well known people they were portraying. Although not stated in the IMDb cast listing, it looked to me that different actors were used for the younger and older Joe Lewis, with neither resembling the real Joe Lewis nor even each other. Rocky Marciano, a short fireplug of a fighter with a battered face he got wading into his taller, longer armed opponents that often made him look more like the loser than the winner of his fights, was played by a tall unmarked fighter. The musical score does nothing to aid the movie.

This could have been a great movie. All the elements where there. But this just ended up being too rushed with mediocre acting and uninspiring scenes. And there were a few things that just never happened. Like Schmeling going off on those MP's, oh please. Yes, the Allied occupation authorities did get on Max's case about building without a permit but anybody who's read Max's bio (highly recommended!) would know the issue was resolved peacefully. Max's wife somehow becomes an ego-centric Nazi b*** and the relationship between the movie's namesakes seems cold. Max appears to pity Louis more than he respects him. The extras in the film are notoriously bad, especially the 6'2" (!) Marciano who appears to be TALLER than Louis! And what about Max's experience as a paratrooper in Crete? They spend all of one minute on that. Scenes just flash by. Err, read "Max Schmeling: An Autobigraphy".

Yes, this is a good movie. Yes, it had good leading and supporting actors. But why did they cast some of the worst extras in motion picture history. For starters, when you have to cast a Rocky Marciano extra for a film, do yourself a favor and cast an Italian actor! Even if he's not Italian, get an actor who looks like Rocky Marciano! This is one of the reasons why this film sticks out in the viewers mind. Like Bret Favres' acting in Something About Mary, the extras in this film stood out as wrong for the roles. They casted a 6'3, Irish looking, skinny actor to play a 5'8 heavy weight Italian Rocky Marciano. Even the guy who played Hitler seemed too wrong for the role. Not as evil as history predicts. The guy they got to play Hitler looked like a short, German actor with a bad mustache. Anyway, the overall point is that every factor of a film matters. From the little things to the big picture, everything counts.