There’s a certain kind of charm that comes from the kind of potentially mob-affiliated working class that you find in pockets of neighborhoods at the heart of the boxing drama Back in the Day. Written by and starring William DeMeo as Anthony, a kid from Brooklyn, he’s born to an Italian mother Mary (Annabella Sciorra) and Puerto Rican dad Jose (Manny Perez). He’s often the subject of jokes, adding an extra barrier of adversity that fuels his rage from launching firecrackers into a racist neighbor’s window to beating up a neighborhood pedophile — and, boy, can he punch. After his mother dies, young Anthony (played as teen as Christian DeMeo) is soon taken under the wing of powerful mob bosses (Michael Madsen and Alec Baldwin) who support his endeavors to train as an armature boxer under Eddie ‘Rocks’ Trevor (Danny Glover).
Beyond the usual training montage (think South Park’s parody) Anthony’s physical transformation is missing once he decides to go pro and escape Brooklyn. Told in a non-linear structure beginning at the end — with an introspective interview set in the old neighborhood (Anthony has since moved to Westchester County) serving as the picture’s framing device — Back in the Day lacks the punch of Creed and the original Rocky pictures. Back in the Day is more or less a nostalgic film about realizing just how toxic the old neighborhood can be. While Anthony attempts to date and violently defend Marie (Shannen Doherty) from sexist barflies, he quickly trades her in for a rotating cast of younger beautiful women in Westchester when he strikes it big. You know you’ve hit it big when you’ve got two beautiful women in your bed and Mike Tyson swings by to give you a pep talk — this must be the good life that Kayne West sang about.
The film is a little more of a mafia story than a boxing one, charting the criminal evolution from the 80s to the present. An amusing comment Anthony makes is that game has changed as gangsters now appear on reality TV. Anthony embraces the culture when he needs to and transitions into the hometown boy that makes good when it changes. Along the way there’s plenty of street fights, baseball bats, betrayals, bad bets in Atlantic City and heartbreaks, all while never betraying his old pal Matty (Joe D’Onofrio), the likable pizzeria owner and compulsive gambler in over his head.
While Back in the Day has its moments of spark, it doesn’t come close to the entertainment value of its clear inspiration such as Creed, Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Directed by Paul Borghese, it’s the kind of guilty pleasure your dad will probably love on Netflix. If anything, it’s familiar and authentic while being completely on-the-nose, with certain passages of dialogue that should have been internalized over the course of a few drafts. Derivative of much better mob and boxing movies, it’s not bad, but one can argue the former might be worse.
Back in the Day is now playing in select theaters and is available on VOD.