A movie about a Holocaust survivor who exorcises his demons in the boxing ring has long odds stacked against it in 2022. Both the Shoah and the sweet science have been brought to screen so many times and in so many ways that any new entrant has to fight like hell just to earn a second glance. Fortunately for Barry Levinson, the film he chose to make features a fierce throwback lead performance from Ben Foster and a compellingly gray-area true-story source.
Harry Haft is an Auschwitz inmate trained to box by an SS commander. The choice to fight for the entertainment and enrichment of Nazis is one that haunts him the rest of his days. Flashbacks follow him into the ring in postwar America, where Haft’s career highlight is getting beaten senseless by Rocky Marciano. But that legend of the ring is no match for the weight Haft carries from what he did in the war to survive. All of Haft’s friends and family pay the price of the guilt he feels. The thing this movie gets right that so many that tackle similar subject matter get wrong is the complicity of all participants in war. The things even victims must do in order to not die scar them for as long as they draw breath. While this may not rank with Son of Saul or Raging Bull in the top rung, The Survivor is not a film to take for granted. The weight of the emotions it delivers packs a wallop. R, 129 min.
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