Split Decisions (1988)

"Split Decisions" has a very heavy reliance upon a selection of stereotypes we have seen countless times before and there is more than a faint whiff of "Rocky" (1976) wafting around in the air - in the best possible way of course. And even though you spend much of the running time negotiating the gamut of familiar characters and situations on offer this still manages to be a very vivid and absorbing film which makes for strangely compulsive viewing for some inexplicable and unfathomable reason. The boxing sequences themselves are extremely convincing in their portrayal of uncompromising and unrelenting brutality and even though the web of events which has been woven is concluded in the most abrupt way imaginable which is much too convenient for its own good it sure as hell beats the alternative of having a plethora of inconclusive and unresolved loose ends.