Director: Maurice O’Carroll Starring: Ciara Berkeley, Ben Condron, Frank Prendergast, Sinead O’Riordan Running Time: 90 minutes
A smooth and soothing voice calmly curses, talks war and battle and life or death. It’s a comfort to the fighter hearing it, all part of the pre-match ritual of Tony, an up-and-coming boxer who believes she could be world champ one day. But, as Swing Bout boldly and bluntly declares, everyone thinks they could be world champion until the real world champion starts boxing their head in.
Swing Bout takes place entirely backstage on a fight night, a look into the world of boxing that steps away from the ring and aims to get inside the fighter’s heads. Tony (Ciara Berkeley) and the other young girls sharing the dressing room and raring to go, preparing and posturing in equal measure as they get in the zone and try to assert dominance over each other. Really none of these girls are on top yet – they’re all there for swing bouts, fights arranged on the fly for a boxing card in the event of an early ending to the scheduled fights. Think of them as understudies, with the same desperate aspirations of making it to the big time. In fact even the fighters on top aren’t the ones on top; boxing even more so than most sports sees the ones doing the most brutal work pulled too and fro by a variety of hangers on and entourages all fighting to get their slice of the pie, and in Swing Bout we see how even the undercard gets underhanded.
Tony has big aspirations, but mostly she wants to impress her estranged mum, there on the night to see her fight – in theory. Her conniving coach (a brassy Sinead O’Riordan) takes a deal with promoters the Casey Brothers to get Tony on the card, and on TV to boot. The only catch is she has to lose. Bets and threats are made, characters hook up in more ways than one, and as the stakes for the various interlopers get higher, the danger for the boxers remains the same. Can Tony and co stick and move long enough to go the distance, before they even head out the curtain to fight?
Maurice O’Connell’s film features a variety of vibrant backstage characters – the sleazy promoter, the two-faced trainer, the dodgy dealer. Some are more interesting than others, and the claustrophobia and tense timing of the all-backstage setting could have been tightened up with a more relentlessly ruthless pace. There’s maybe a subplot too many as characters go stretches without checking in with each other, the biggest story elements and their themes getting less of the limelight as we check in with something else. Better is the use of radio commentary throughout, faintly heard in the background, to describe the fights we don’t see – this steadily and subtly raises the tension in the film until a big brutal blowout finale. But Swing Bout is at its best with its characterisation, particularly with its boxers.
We see how rowing and shape throwing pre-fight turns into respect and regard after, the anxieties of even the most brazen self-promoters and the motivations bigger than padding out records and purses. Tony and the other girls sharing the locker room have an interiority and a texture, in the quiet moments of focus they get O’Connell shows a capability with actors, impressively engaging especially with the young cast. The supporting characters, established and engaged vets of Irish film, give the film that big fight feel, O’Riordan and co going larger than life and making this immersive walk through the world of boxing into a salacious story of sex, drugs, crime and betrayal. Their manipulations and manoeuvres are here to take over, but in the background, brave and dedicated, their girls are here to box. Swing Bout shines brightest when it gets them under the lights.
(3 / 5)
Swing Bout is in select Irish cinemas now.