Movies centered on boxing pack unique abilities of inspiration and entertainment while delving into the human spirit and telling stories of underdogs triumphing over odds stacked against them to honest redemption.
With their ability to capture the essence of the boxing sport, showcasing the captivating world inside the boxing ring, boxing films transport the audience to the intersection where fighters aren't just leveling their opponents but also battling against their inner demons and personal challenges.
In this article, we will introduce the top 10 best boxing movies on Netflix.
- Ali (2001)
Ali is a 2001 American biographical sports drama film co-written, produced and directed by Michael Mann. The film focuses on ten years in the life of the boxer Muhammad Ali, played by Will Smith, from 1964 to 1974, featuring his capture of the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, his conversion to Islam, criticism of the Vietnam War, and banishment from boxing, his return to fight Joe Frazier in 1971, and, finally, his reclaiming the title from George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle fight of 1974.
The project began in 1992 when producer Paul Ardaji optioned the movie rights to Muhammad Ali's life story. Filming began in Los Angeles on January 11, 2001, on a $105 million budget, shooting took place in New York City, Chicago, Miami, and Mozambique.
The film was well received by critics, but was a box-office bomb, grossing just $87 million against a production budget of approximately $118 million. Will Smith and Jon Voight received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.
- Southpaw (2015)
Southpaw is a 2015 American sports drama film directed by Antoine Fuqua, written by Kurt Sutter and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker and Rachel McAdams. The film follows a boxer who sets out to get his life back on track after losing his wife after a gunshot and later his young daughter to child protective services. The film was released on July 24, 2015, by The Weinstein Company. The film received mixed reviews from critics, while Gyllenhaal and Oona Laurence's performances received positive reviews. The film grossed $95 million worldwide against a production budget of $30 million.
The movie was set in New York City, but it was filmed in Pittsburgh and the nearby town of Indiana, Pennsylvania.
The film marked one of the last films to be scored by James Horner and the first of three posthumous releases to feature his music. The film and the film's soundtrack album are dedicated to his memory.
Southpaw grossed $52.4 million in North America and $38.5 million in other territories for a total gross of $92 million, against a budget of $30 million.
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 60%, based on 238 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Jake Gyllenhaal delivers an impressively committed performance, but Southpaw beats it down with a dispiriting drama that pummels viewers with genre clichés." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 57 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
- Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, scored by and starring Clint Eastwood from a screenplay written by Paul Haggis, based on stories from the 2000 collection Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and cutman Jerry Boyd. It also stars Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. The film follows Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald (Swank), an underdog amateur boxer who is helped by an underappreciated boxing trainer (Eastwood) to achieve her dream of becoming a professional.
Million Dollar Baby was theatrically released on December 15, 2004, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received critical acclaim and grossed $216.8 million worldwide. The film garnered seven nominations at the 77th Academy Awards and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (for Freeman). It has since been cited as one of the best films of the 2000s, the 21st century and of all time.
Million Dollar Baby initially had a limited release, opening in eight theaters in December 2004. In its later wide release opening, the film earned $12,265,482 in North America and quickly became a box-office hit both domestically and internationally. It grossed $216,763,646 in theaters; $100,492,203 in the United States, and $116,271,443 in other territories.
- Creed (2015)
Creed is a 2015 American sports drama film directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Covington. It is the first spin-off of and is the seventh installment in the Rocky film series. It stars Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellew, and Graham McTavish. In the film, amateur boxer Adonis Creed (Jordan) is trained and mentored by Rocky Balboa (Stallone), the former rival turned friend of Adonis' father, Apollo Creed.
Creed had its premiere on November 19, 2015, at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles and was released in the United States on November 25, by Warner Bros. Pictures, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the date of the opening scene in the first film. It grossed $173 million worldwide and received universal acclaim from critics who praised Coogler's direction, the screenplay, and acting performances. Among its accolades, it was selected by National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2015, while Stallone won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
- The Fighter (2010)
The Fighter is a 2010 American biographical sports drama film directed by David O. Russell, and stars Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo. The film centers on the lives of professional boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his older half-brother and former boxer Dicky Eklund (Bale). The film was inspired by the 1995 documentary featuring the Eklund-Ward family titled High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell.
The Fighter was released in theaters on December 17, 2010, by Paramount Pictures. And received largely positive reviews, with critics praising the performances; many commented that Bale's physical transformation, accent, and mannerisms made for one of the greatest performances of that year. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning the awards for Best Supporting Actor (Bale) and Best Supporting Actress (Leo).
The Fighter had grossed $93.6 million in the United States & Canada and in other territories it collected $35.5 million, for a worldwide total of $129.1 million; the film made a profit over its $25 million budget.
The film received seven Academy Award nominations, winning two with Best Supporting Actor for Bale and Best Supporting Actress for Leo, marking the first film to win both awards since Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986. The film was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor (Drama) for Wahlberg, Best Supporting Actress for Leo and Adams, Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and a nomination for Best Director for Russell. The film received three Chicago Film Critics award nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and Best Supporting Actress nominations for Adams and Leo. Bale won a Satellite Award, the Critics' Choice Award, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, and the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor. Leo won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
- Cinderella Man (2005)
Cinderella Man is a 2005 American biographical sports drama film directed by Ron Howard, starring Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger and Paul Giamatti. The film tells the story of heavyweight boxing champion James J. Braddock, who was dubbed "The Cinderella Man" by journalist Damon Runyon. This is the second collaboration for Howard and Crowe, the first being A Beautiful Mind (2001).
The film received generally positive reviews but underperformed at the box office, grossing $108 million against a budget of $88 million. It received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Giamatti.
Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 80% based on 215 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "With grittiness and an evocative sense of time and place, Cinderella Man is a powerful underdog story. And Ron Howard and Russell Crowe prove to be a solid combination."[6] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare average grade of "A+".
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars. He wrote that while Cinderella Man was effecting as a boxing movie, its true genius was in Giamatti's "home run" portrayal of Gould and Crowe's against type performance as a "level-headed, sweet-tempered" family man: "You'd have to go back to actors like James Stewart and Spencer Tracy to find such goodness and gentleness". The film earned $61 million at the US box office and $108 million worldwide.
- A Prayer Before Dawn (2017)
A Prayer Before Dawn is a 2017 biographical prison drama film directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire and written by Jonathan Hirschbein and Nick Saltrese. The film stars Joe Cole and is based on the book A Prayer Before Dawn: My Nightmare in Thailand's Prisons by Billy Moore.
A Prayer Before Dawn had its world premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on 19 May, and was released in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2018, by Altitude, and in the United States on 10 August 2018, by A24.
A Prayer Before Dawn: A Nightmare in Thailand was first published in 2014 by Maverick House, Dublin, Ireland. In February 2017, A24 acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. In April 2017, Altitude Film Distribution acquired UK distribution rights to the film. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2017. It went onto screen at South by Southwest on 12 March 2018.
It was released in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2018, and in the United States through DirecTV Cinema on 12 July 2018, before being released in a limited release on 10 August 2018.
- Creed II (2018)
Creed II is a 2018 American sports drama film directed by Steven Caple Jr. from a screenplay by Juel Taylor and Sylvester Stallone. It is the sequel to Creed (2015) and the eighth installment in the Rocky film series. It stars Michael B. Jordan, Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris, Phylicia Rashad, Florian Munteanu, and Dolph Lundgren. In the film, under the continued tutelage of Rocky Balboa (Stallone), Adonis Creed (Jordan) faces off against Viktor Drago (Munteanu), the son of Ivan Drago (Lundgren), who became responsible for the death of Adonis' father Apollo Creed in Rocky IV (1985).
Creed II premiered on November 14, 2018, at the Lincoln Center in New York City and was released in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. Pictures on November 21. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the performances, character development, and Caple's direction, while noting its predictability. It was also a commercial success, grossing $214 million worldwide.
Creed II grossed $115.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $98.4 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $214.1 million, against a production budget of $50 million.
In the United States and Canada, Creed II was released alongside Ralph Breaks the Internet and Robin Hood, and the wide expansion of Green Book, and was projected to gross $44–54 million from 3,350 theaters in its five-day opening weekend. The film made $11.6 million on its first day, including $3.7 million from Tuesday night previews (the second best pre-Thanksgiving total ever behind fellow release Ralph Breaks the Internet's $3.8 million and marking a 64% improvement over the first film's $1.4 million preview total). It went on to debut to $35.3 million in its opening weekend (a five-day total of $55.8 million), finishing second at the box office and marking the best Thanksgiving opening for a live-action film, besting Enchanted ($49.1 million) and Four Christmases ($46.1 million). In its second and third weekends the film made $16.8 million and $10 million, finishing in third both times. Over the five-day Christmas frame (its fifth week of release), the film passed the $109.7 million domestic total made by the first film.
- Snatch (2000)
Snatch is a 2000 crime comedy film written and directed by Guy Ritchie, featuring an ensemble cast. Set in the London criminal underworld, the film contains two intertwined plots: one dealing with the search for a stolen diamond, the other with a small-time boxing promoter (Jason Statham) who finds himself under the thumb of a ruthless gangster (Alan Ford) who is ready and willing to have his subordinates carry out severe and sadistic acts of violence.
The film features an assortment of characters, including Irish Traveller "One Punch" Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt), Russian weapons dealer Boris "the Blade" Yurinov (Rade Šerbedžija), professional thief and gambling addict Franky "Four-Fingers" (Benicio del Toro), American gangster and jewelry expert Abraham Denovitz known as "Cousin Avi" (Dennis Farina), small-time crooks Sol (Lennie James) and Vinny (Robbie Gee), getaway driver Tyrone (Ade), and bounty hunter Bullet-Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones). It is also distinguished by a kinetic direction and editing style, an intricate double plot featuring numerous ironic twists of chance and causality, and a fast pace.
Snatch was largely successful, both in critical response and financial gross, and has gone on to develop a devoted cult following. From a budget of $10 million, the film grossed £12,137,698 in the United Kingdom, $30.3 million in the United States and Canada, and a total of $83.6 million worldwide.
- Catch the Fair One (2021)
Catch the Fair One is a 2021 American thriller film written, directed, and produced by Josef Kubota Wladyka, based on a story by Wladyka and Kali Reis. It stars Reis, Daniel Henshall, Tiffany Chu, Michael Drayer, Lisa Emery, Kimberly Guerrero, and Kevin Dunn. The plot follows a young American Indian woman and former boxer named Kaylee who voluntarily joins a sex trafficking ring to find her missing younger sister. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 12, 2021. It was released in the United States on February 11, 2022, by IFC Films. The film was met with critical acclaim, with praise aimed towards the story and performances. At the 37th Independent Spirit Awards, Reis received a nomination for Best Female Lead.
The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 12, 2021. By the end of its run, the film screened at festivals in Deauville, Jerusalem, San Diego, Warsaw, and Woodstock. In August 2021, IFC Films bought the film's distribution rights. The film was released in the United States on February 11, 2022. In April 2022, IFC Films signed an output deal with AMC+. The film is set to be released on the streaming service on May 13, 2022.
In the United States and Canada, the film earned $7,992 from thirty theaters in its opening weekend. It made $8,625 from eight theaters in its second weekend, and $6,397 from three theaters in its third, $295 from one theater in its fourth, $244 from two theaters in its fifth, and $210 from two theaters in its sixth.
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