SIX ROUNDS: A Monochromatic, Melodramatic Monologue

Marcus Flemmings‘ debut feature Six Rounds is a peculiar little film. I mean that quite literally, too. It’s peculiar in that I really can’t recall ever having seen something on its wavelength before, and it’s little in that the film itself clocks in at under 55 minutes. “But Ryan,” I hear you ask, “How are you supposed to create a story and flesh out its characters and build on themes in such a short space of time?” It’s a valid question, and one that Six Rounds has a pretty clear answer to.

The answer comes in the form of the monologue, both internal and external. Six Rounds functions as an hour-long internal monologue, creating a tone and atmosphere that seems to stretch the bounds of realism in favour of something more profound. The film follows Stally (Adam J. Bernard), a boxer trying to navigate racial and societal issues in the middle of the 2011 London riots. Rather than focus on the riots and aim for big political statements, however, Flemmings uses them as a springboard instead and jumps straight into something deeper and infinitely more personal.

The Knockouts

Six Rounds cannot be faulted for ambition. In his debut feature, Flemmings targets something complex and unique. His film isn’t a flyaway success—supporting characters and performances vary in quality and there’s one particularly misjudged moment that stops the film completely dead—but his ambition here is so admirable that you’ll be willing to move past this and relish everything else that he has accomplished.

One of the film’s most striking elements is its visual design. The use of black and white for most of the film’s runtime could feel gimmicky, but instead it adds depth to Stally’s world. This is a man struggling with himself, unsure of his path and stuck inside a society that is unsure how to see him. By draining the film of colour and plunging Stally into a monochrome environment, Six Rounds finds a clever bleakness within what could have be a livelier story. Stally’s journey across the film has the beginnings of a crowd-pleasing story, but Six Rounds isn’t interested in that kind of filmmaking: the drained colour palette only works to emphasise this even more.

Similarly, the film’s cinematography is stunning. Haidar Zafar‘s camera is loose and free, rarely static and almost always moving. He demonstrates an effortless talent for naturalistic but effective cinematography: a long take simply holds back and follows two characters as they walk and talk; a trio of friends are positioned in the frame’s middle ground, the camera only tracking forward when the tension begins to escalate. There’s even a particularly breathtaking shot of Stally and his girlfriend Andrea (Phoebe Torrance) leaning on opposite ends of the same car.

Missed Punches

Yet, for every visual success, Six Rounds soon finds something to stumble over. Its handling of Stally as a character is seamless, but other players in the film are less successful. Chris (Santino Zicchi) is an almost unbearable onscreen presence: it’s hard to judge whether this is the fault of the writing or Zicchi‘s performance here, but whenever his face surfaces in a dialogue-driven scene, you’d best brace yourself. The reveal that he is the one Stally is fighting in the film’s repeated boxing scenes is effective, but once these scenes are allowed to return to dialogue, it’s tough not to feel back at square one again.

Andrea, Stally’s girlfriend, is one of the film’s few enjoyable supporting roles. Torrance plays Andrea well, pushing through some of her hammiest dialogue and locating something interesting within her. It’s a shame that Flemmings soon subjects her to a brief monologue that is lacking in both relevance and poeticism. Andrea almost comedically glides around the frame, the background filled with stars as she discusses the multitude of them in the night sky. A horrible sequence of melodrama and tacky dialogue, it’s the film’s most misjudged moment by a wide margin.

The Final Round

Thankfully, Six Rounds manages to reform and refocus itself nicely by the home stretch. The moments of Stally alone are some of the film’s best, and they’re most dominant in this final act. As he stumbles around drunk in his flat, he begins rambling to himself about what’s important to him, what he can’t lose. After a solid, if unremarkable, performance thus far, it’s this moment that allows us to finally appreciate Bernard‘s work here. Six Rounds isn’t particularly accessible when it comes to emotion, so Bernard‘s ability to bring Stally’s feelings to the surface so efficiently in the final act is commendable.

The film’s only real consistency—besides its gorgeous aesthetic—comes in the form of its thematic content. An exploration of racism and society, Six Rounds continuously finds new ground to tread and never repeats itself. A conversation between Stally and a middle-class white lady during the middle act works as a near perfect encapsulation of Flemmings‘ overarching themes, and the film’s repeated boxing sequences also work to provide stark symbolism as well as structure. As the camera finds different areas of the boxers’ bodies to focus on, and as the editing shifts between natural and slowed down, we watch a man fight hard for something that he’s still trying to understand himself.

Conclusion

Six Rounds is ultimately much more thematically interesting than it is entertaining. It isn’t a film that necessarily wants to entertain us, but its inability to never lock in a consistently good stretch until the final act makes it a challenging watch for the wrong reasons. There’s undeniably more good here than bad, but the film would benefit from a bit more focus and a more accessible emotional core; it’s so guarded with its characters’ emotions that it can’t help but feel melodramatic in scenes that should be empowering. It’s an A for ambition and direction, but the screenwriting? That needed work.

Six Rounds is an ambitious and thematically compelling character study, but it’s one that never seems confident in what it’s trying to achieve.

Now it’s your turn: Did you find Six Rounds to be lacking in focus? Or was it a direct knockout in each and every way? Let us know in the comments!

Six Rounds will be released in the UK on April 9th, and in the US on April 21st.