Synopsis
Nineteen-year-old Danny Flynn is imprisoned for his involvement with the I.R.A. in Belfast. He leaves behind his family and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Maggie Hamill. Fourteen years later, Danny is released from prison and returns to his old working class neighborhood to resume his life as a boxer.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Daniel Day-LewisDanny Flynn
- Brian CoxJoe Hamill
- Emily WatsonMaggie
- Ken StottIke Weir
- Gerard McSorleyHarry
- David HaymanJoe Hamill's Aide
- Kenneth CranhamMatt MaGuire
- Lorraine PilkingtonBride
- Niall ShanahanGroom
- John WallPriest
Recommendations
- 100
San Francisco Chronicle
It's a tribute to Day-Lewis that he can play a character like Danny -- cautious, withdrawn, inarticulate -- and endow him an eloquence and grace that aren't dependent on language. Without him, The Boxer might still be a powerful tale of loyalty and love, with a core of moral complexity; with Day-Lewis in the lead, it approaches greatness. - 90
The A.V. Club
Through quietly fiery performances by Day-Lewis and Watson, as well as novel-like depth and complexity, The Boxer not only avoids these pitfalls but emerges as a thoroughly engrossing movie. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
Writer-director Jim Sheridan, co-screenwriter Terry George, and Sheridan's favorite actor (and Oscar winner for My Left Foot) Daniel Day-Lewis reunite in The Boxer with a mellower political message that translates, roughly, into ''Can't we all just get along?'' - 80
Salon
In some ways, this is the most conventional of Sheridan's movies. But it never feels sentimental because of the grittiness of his approach. - 78
Austin Chronicle
Director Jim Sheridan, who has collaborated with writer Terry George on In the Name of the Father and Some Mother's Son clearly understands the weariness that inevitably consumes not only long, seemingly irresolvable conflicts but stories about them. - 75
ReelViews
The two actors, Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), give such forceful performances and interact so well that it's impossible not to be mesmerized by their interaction. - 70
Dallas Observer
It can't compare to what might have been: a full-scale performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as an Irish raging bull--a rebel with a cause. There are still traces of greatness in what he attempts, and it's more than enough to make the movie worth a lingering look. - 70
Newsweek
What holds the movie together is the fiercely self-contained commitment of Day-Lewis's performance and the palpable chemistry between him and Watson.
