The Set-Up is a film about a boxer who might be at the end of his career and he gets caught up in a plot by a gangster to fix the fight. I really enjoyed the structure of the story because it takes a somewhat different twist on this familiar script. All it took was one change to the formula in order to make it click for me. The only real change was the fact that our lead actor goes into the fight not knowing about the fix at all. So it's not a morality tale where he must wrestle the entire time with what to do. Instead we get this level of tension waiting to see what will happen whether he wins or loses, because both could be disastrous. At certain points I couldn't figure out which outcome would be the most beneficial or satisfactory.
Robert Ryan did a great job in the lead role of The Set-Up. He was convincing as a determined fighter with a desire to prove something, and you could also feel his pain as he got beat up. However, where the actors looked like people who had taken a beating, the actual fight itself was terrible. I don't know if boxers just fought differently in the 1940s, or if it was staged poorly for the camera, but it didn't feel real. I couldn't believe the punches were connecting, and they rarely looked like they'd even cause a bruise if they did connect. Considering it's a short film and such a large part of it is the fight itself, that took some of the drama out of the movie for me. I cared about what would happen, but didn't get as involved in the fight as I'd like. Still I can say The Set-Up was a solid film that I enjoyed despite some of its shortcomings.
Robert Ryan did a great job in the lead role of The Set-Up. He was convincing as a determined fighter with a desire to prove something, and you could also feel his pain as he got beat up. However, where the actors looked like people who had taken a beating, the actual fight itself was terrible. I don't know if boxers just fought differently in the 1940s, or if it was staged poorly for the camera, but it didn't feel real. I couldn't believe the punches were connecting, and they rarely looked like they'd even cause a bruise if they did connect. Considering it's a short film and such a large part of it is the fight itself, that took some of the drama out of the movie for me. I cared about what would happen, but didn't get as involved in the fight as I'd like. Still I can say The Set-Up was a solid film that I enjoyed despite some of its shortcomings.