In Welby Ings’ feature film directorial debut, Tim Roth plays the alcoholic father of a small-town boxing star who, through a friendship with a gay Māori outcast, questions his sexuality and the toxic masculinity of the town that he lives in.
★★★✰✰
In Punch, we’re first introduced to protagonist Jim (Jordan Oosterhof) as a child, running around with his friends with paper wings strapped to his back. They’re playing on a beach, surrounded by barbed wire, introducing the restrictive nature of his environment in this town and the suffocating masculinity that stifles the freedom of the male characters. Jim’s father (Tim Roth) picks Jim up and they practice boxing drills. We’re immediately shown that boxing is the priority in both Jim and his father’s life.
Jim is the golden boy of a small town in New Zealand. He has a talent for boxing and his dad constantly puts pressure on him to train. His passion for making his own music videos is seen as merely a distraction from his boxing that he shouldn’t be indulging in. Him and his dad have a close but fraught relationship due to his father’s problem with drinking. Looking for moments of freedom, Jim strips naked and starts running nude whilst training on a quiet beach, and is seen by social outcast, Whetu (Conan Hayes). Through a series of interactions, they strike up a friendship which causes both of them to look at life with a different perspective.
Punch takes a close look at the restrictive nature of both living in a small town and toxic masculinity. Whetu is both an outcast as an openly gay man but also as a Māori person, with this culture being an important part of his identity. The way that he is treated by society in the town demonstrates the rife homophobia and disdain for anything out of the norm in this town. Punch explores the male relationships closely, whether it is between Whetu and Jim or Jim and his father. These relationships are shown to be restricted by the culture in the town, and it is once these characters free themselves from the expectations of the society they live in that they can express the way they feel and develop emotionally.
However, in focusing on these male relationships, the way that the few female characters are portrayed is not so nuanced. Chelsea (Abigail Laurent) is Jim’s girlfriend, and her character merely serves to demonstrate how unsure he is about his sexuality. It is also Chelsea and another female classmate that are shown to torment Whetu during school. These female characters are shown to also be victims of the toxic masculinity of the town, such as when one of Jim’s popular friends takes embarrassing photos of Chelsea when Jim was trying to film a music video. There is potential to show these perspectives further that never quite develops enough.
The cinematography of Punch is beautiful. The stark contrast between the remote beauty of the New Zealand beaches and the claustrophobia of the boxing training room is clearly shown. Jim explains to Whetu that something he enjoys about boxing is the control that he feels in the boxing room, whereas the environment outside is shown to be outside of that control.
Punch is not a typical sports movie, and the boxing serves to show the male relationships rather than being the focus of the movie. The performances of the lead characters, and the key male relationships, is emotionally sensitive, demonstrating how everyone is victim to the toxic masculinity in the town. The film expertly shows the freedom of living outside of these societal expectations and how that freedom helps the characters to become better and more fulfilled people.
The Verdict
Despite some weaker female characters, Punch remains an evocative and affecting depiction of toxic masculinity and how it contribute to discrimination. Ings’ feature debut breaks free from the trappings of standard sports films, to stand as an impressive analysis of sexuality.
Words by Annie Gray
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