SHADOW GLORIES

Ziad Hamzeh’s directorial debut is a problematic exploration of ambition, redemption, and kickboxing. Set in Lewiston (the city where, we’re reminded, “Muhammad Ali threw the phantom punch” in his infamous one-minute bout with Sonny Liston in ’65), it focuses on coulda-been-contender Simon (Marc Sandler), who’s hung up his gloves to teach martial arts, a career that allows him to spout nuggets like “one learns to fight so one never has to.” As he tries to reconcile with the wife he left to follow his dreams, he also mentors a fiery young female fighter, C.J. (Sara Rachel Isenberg), who’s convinced she can beat current heavyweight champ “Killer” Kuzinski. Problem: “Killer” is (a) male, (b) gargantuan, (c) murderous. The two do finally get into the ring. What happens next is just too outlandish to believe.

Hamzeh is a decent director; he evokes a run-down city inhabited by equally run-down people with a severe palette of blues and grays, and the fight scenes are suitably visceral and blood-soaked, even if they do recycle every boxing-flick cliché (cutting in and out of slo-mo, the garbled, molasses-slow roar of the crowd, even a gratuitous “Yo, Adrian!”). But the film is too much. A simple parable about the destructive nature of violence would have sufficed without the demented turn this finally takes.

— Mike Miliard