Good concept, poorly executed.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Oh how the Mighty have Fallen. Not Sonny Liston but Director Robert Townsend. The Once Promising Director who Helmed this Biopic of Heavyweight Champion Liston is Either Out of His Depth or couldn't Pull this Off and it seems like there wasn't much Effort and the Whole Thing Looks Cheap, Undeveloped, and Haphazard.The Low-Budget is No Excuse. Much can be Made for Very Little with some Creativity and Depth of Concern. The Movie is so Muddled and Amateurish at Times that it is Knocked Down In the Opening and Never gets up. The Highlights and Lowlights of the Life of Sonny Liston are Never Explored with Compelling Cinema. It is Flat and Uninteresting and Considering the Enigmatic Liston's Private Life and His Powerful Presence in the Ring it is Mysteriously Boring.The Phantom Punch that Cassius Clay (Ali) Threw in Their Second Fight, one of the most Controversial Knockouts in Boxing History and Ironically the Title of the Film is Hardly Examined, Explored, or for that Matter it is Glossed Over for some Unknown Reason. The Ending of Liston's Life is also Mysterious and the Mystery here is that, again it is so Rushed that it seems a Featherweight is at the Controls.The Film isn't Awful, it is just a Mess. Considering the Material Available it is the Greatest of Concern as to why this Thing Turned Out so Ineffective. it should have been a No Brainer and it turns out to be a Non-Contender.

When I saw Robert Townsend directing and so many actors I respect like Ving Rhames, David Proval and Stacey Dash I really expected a lot more out of this film. It showed absolute zero of the ferociousness of Sonny Liston, the way he paralyzed Floyd Patterson with fear (in real life Patterson brought a fake beard and glasses to both Liston fights so he could sneak out unnoticed after getting his inevitable beatings) and it showed absolute zero of the build up to the first Cassius Clay fight. In real life Liston slapped Clay in a casino, and Clay famously left a bear trap on Liston's front steps. Sonny Liston was one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century, but this film shows none of that. It's basically: convict gets paroled, boxes, deals with bigotry and eventually...well, honestly, I turned it off during the first Clay fight, so I don't know how the film goes after that. This looked to me like a payday for everyone involved. I hate to post a bad review, especially after all the years that I've enjoyed Robert Townsend's work, but this movie was a real stinkeroo! You look at a film like Raging Bull where they were able to make Jake LaMotta sympathetic, even while showing his violent side. None of that is done in Phantom Punch. It's like making a film on Mike Tyson and simply showing that he raised pigeons while he wasn't boxing.

I've seen several movies about Muhammad Ali but I have forgotten everything I knew about Sonny Liston from those movies. Reading some of the IMDb comments tells me this movie might not be telling the whole story. In fact, the comments suggest this movie may be wrong about a lot of historical facts about a real person.But forgetting all this, I thought this was quite a good movie. Ving Rhames gave an Oscar-worthy performance and made me believe there was more to Sonny Liston than the angry man the world believed he was. I actually didn't know anything about Liston, but once he became famous, it appeared the world hated him for defeating Floyd Patterson and being such a bad boy. But he really wasn't so bad, at least not here. Plenty of scenes show him as a gentle man trying to make a better life for himself. And as hard as mobsters try to get him to throw fights, he doesn't appear to want to.True, he is shown getting violent because someone accuses Geraldine, a woman he genuinely loves, of being a mere hooker.And he is unfaithful to Geraldine. But he really tries to make it up to her. And he doesn't hit her.And Rhames doesn't give the only good performance. Stacey Dash shows intelligence and determination as the woman Liston loves. Rick Roberts is great as the prison priest who discovers Liston's tendency to get into fights could be used constructively. And the good father follows Liston's career on the outside as well, as he takes a regular church job. Nicholas Turturro does a great job as the man who seems to be in charge of Liston's career, but has to answer to higher authorities.There is quite a lot of violence and threats of violence, and I don't mean just in the ring.One very effective scene makes use of slow motion as well as sound editing (that's what I'll call it) that suggests Liston has been hit one too many times and things don't seem real.Most of the music here is great, and why not? It was set in an era when music was music. Toward the end, rock and roll was taking over, and there are some signs of that here. But it's Vegas, baby! And Bridgette Wilson-Sampras is quite a singer. Very good-looking too. No wonder Liston was tempted.The movie is not without its weaknesses. I never speculated on what was real and what wasn't, but Cassius Clay doesn't even look like Cassius Clay (though neither did Will Smith), and he hardly says a word. Clay was known for his mouth, and off in the distance we do get to hear "I am the greatest!". But Clay doesn't brag or use his colorful words. Not in this movie.And I saw a 50-star flag. I've never seen a 48-star flag where the stars weren't in neat rows and columns, so that must be what I saw. It was still the 50s at the time.Overall, this was a worthy effort. Unless you want to tell the truth.

Boxing is a sport almost impossible to fake believably; the subtleties of in-fighting, for instance, or a short, solid shot to the jaw (like the one that felled Sonny Liston in real life) are lost on the big screen- despite the size of the "canvas." In RAGING BULL, director Martin Scorsese (applauded by critics upon the film's release) has Robert DeNiro as Jake Lamotta literally roaring like a dinosaur at one point- and, in some of the most amateurish filmmaking I've ever seen outside of a ROCKY movie, clinging to a strand of rope while being cinematically slain by "Sugar Ray Robinson," taunting him with: "You never knocked me down, Ray." A mere technicality, that: in Real Life, Lamotta was out on his feet when the referee rescued him, and, barely able to stand, was led back to his corner by his corner men. Which kinda sorta brings me to PHANTOM PUNCH. The book by Nick Tosches that may or may not have inspired this movie is so one-sided in its presentation of "the facts" that several facts are overlooked (or glossed over in passing): Muhammad Ali (who was NOT A SOUTHPAW, as depicted in this alleged Motion Picture) DID, in fact, drop Liston with a short, jolting right to the jaw in their second fight. In fact, the very first punch he landed in the rematch was just such a short, jolting right to the jaw- a punch the crouching Liston proved susceptible to in both fights. Boxing writer Jimmy Cannon is said to have made this observation: "I saw the punch land, and it couldn't have squashed a grape." Oh, yeah? Tell that to Cleveland Williams, who ran into that selfsame right in the second round of his fight with Ali: the punch dropped him in his tracks. Many of Ali's many fans refer to the Williams fight as his finest performance- and yet NO ONE has ever suggested that the same short, jolting right that dropped Williams for the first of four knockdowns was a "phantom punch." That this movie would even perpetuate such a myth speaks volumes. Against former middleweight Floyd Patterson, Liston looked awesome; against bigger and better opponents, not so much. Eddie Machen, who was stopped by Joe Frazier, went the distance with Liston. And, like Cleveland Williams, he complained of ointment of some kind getting in his eyes during the fight. In his first fight with Ali, Liston can actually be seen extending his arm to place his glove against Ali's cheek and then WIPING it across Ali's face. One need only go back and look at the fight: the proof of something unsavory going on is THERE. Ving Rhames, so good as "Mike Tyson" in UNDISPUTED, is wasted here: PHANTOM PUNCH is so badly written and directed that it wouldn't pass muster as a TV movie (which is saying a lot: I remember cringing when, as a kid, I saw a TV movie with Erik Estrada playing-acting as a boxer: at one point, he tells someone that there are "five punches in boxing"). I've been on the receiving end of a beating at least once in my life (to a three-time Golden Gloves champion), so I find the kind of misinformation in movies like this nigh intolerable. Muhammad Ali was NOT a southpaw.