Hands of Stone (2016)
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Critic Consensus: Hands of Stone's strong cast and fascinating real-life story aren't enough to compensate for a crowded narrative and formulaic script.
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Cast
as Ray Arcel
as Roberto Duran
as Sugar Ray Leonard
as Felicidad Duran
as Stephanie Arcel
as Frankie Carbo
as Juanita Leonard
as Carlos Eleta
as Adele
as Don King
as Kid Duran
as Benny Huertas
as Clara Samaniego
as Marine Molinari
as Gil Clancey
as Howard Cosell
as Angelo Dundee
as Margarito Duran
as Roger Leonard
as Ken Buchanan
as Davey Moore
as Eugenio Iglesias
as Sharon Leonard
as Head Commisioner
as Toti
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Critic Reviews for Hands of Stone
All Critics (81) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (35) | Rotten (46)
Traditional and uninspired, it does an adequate job of relating Duran's story but falls short of providing an engaging cinematic experience.
There are some engaging asides about Arcel's struggles with boxing's dirty underbelly, but they feel like they belong to a different movie. (De Niro's superfluous and soporific voiceover, however, belongs in no movie whatsoever.)
In trying to encompass way too much, Hands of Stone ends up feeling superficial and unsatisfying.
"Hands of Stone" is less like a boxing flick and more like a professional wrestling battle royale with all its different subplots angling for main event status.
It's engaging, sure, with some fast-paced and capable fight sequences.
While Mr. Ramírez is excellent at portraying Durán's cockiness and imposing physicality, the movie struggles to make him a well-rounded character.
Audience Reviews for Hands of Stone
I was very interested in this story, Ana de Armas was hot as Duran's wife. Hated the depiction of the Americans in Panama as cruel, but apparently that's how Duran saw it. Ruben Blades was great, as was the entire cast. I thought they skipped through Duran's long career too fast before suddenly getting to Leonard. Good boxing movie.
Hands of Stone has a good story to tell but does it in a very predictable and melodramatic way. The fall of Roberto Durán is portrayed in such a 'Hollywood' way, you have to roll your eyes at the desperate attempt for emotional dialogue. The film goes through so many plot points in rapid session, it fails to tell the important details of Durán's life that makes for a better story. The shaky cam during the fight scenes makes it difficult to follow the action in the ring and they don't seem greatly choreographed to begin with. Perhaps i've been spoiled by films like Creed that came out just last year and that film wasn't even about a real person. Hands of Stone feels like it doesn't have enough of a coherent message to portray exactly what it wants to be as a film. The acting is fine, the visuals of 70s Panama and 80s New York City is great. Hell, you even get a decent Don King impersonation but it is poor writing and a poor narrative that weighs down the film. Hands of Stone is a missed opportunity to cover the life of one of boxing's most influential figures and it's a damn shame.
Super Reviewer
More than anything Hands of Stone is frustrating because there is clearly a large scale to the film and real ambition from both writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz and the entire cast, but as is true with many a biopics Hands of Stone tries to do and tell its audience too much in too short a time span inadvertently making the film more about a series of events than the characters participating in those events. In theory this is supposed to be a movie about the relationship between Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramírez) and legendary trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro) and while this goal is communicated well enough and understood there are so many extraneous things going on around the two central characters the film becomes distracted by its own plot strands. The word I'm looking for is "scattershot." Hands of Stone is a broad strokes approach to the biopic, but in being so it communicates such key elements in haphazard ways thus forcing the audience to not invest as much as they should or even want to. Granted, the film does certain things right as this viewer in particular had no prior knowledge of Durán or his story yet I was immediately interested in the real life events the film was depicting. That is all to say the film is a little all over the place. This especially becomes true after the film effortlessly builds to Durán's first bout with Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond) and completes that fight within the first hour of the film. While the film could have certainly told us all we needed to know about Durán through the lens of his Sugar Ray fights and all of the drama those entailed Hands of Stone instead feels the need to go further by not only telling us Durán's story as a boxer, but his story as a Panamanian activist, Arcel's story that deals with the New York City mob and a long-lost daughter even going as far to include Leonard's perspective on certain things. Add in the familial drama that Durán creates and deals in with wife Felicidad Iglesias (Ana de Armas) and their five children and there is enough material here for an HBO miniseries. Unfortunately, Hands of Stone is a feature film that clocks in under two hours and while it carries real momentum in the first hour leading up to that first showdown with Sugar Ray that energy is largely lost in the second half of the film leaving us with a movie that might have been something really special and unique did it not try so desperately to adhere to the worn-out sports drama template. read the whole review at www.reviewsfromabed.com
Super Reviewer
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