Jonathan Jakubowicz
![HANDS OF STONE: Champion With A Chip On His Shoulder](https://www.filminquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Hands-of-Stone.jpg)
Edgar Ramírez is electrifying as welterweight boxing champion Roberto Durán in the new movie Hands of Stone. Unfortunately, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s routinely conceived, routinely executed boxing biopic is a dull canvas for a performance, slashed in such angry red brush strokes. The movie goes the distance, though not as cleanly or directly as we might have wished.
![HANDS OF STONE: Champion With A Chip On His Shoulder](https://www.filminquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Hands-of-Stone.jpg)
We’ve seen Robert De Niro in a boxing film before, right? Yeah, it was just a little movie called Raging Bull, so there’s no way his return to the cinematic ring will overshadow what Hands of Stone is actually about. Okay, so everyone’s focusing on De Niro’s return as legendary trainer Ray Arcel, but the film is really about Edgar Ramírez’s Roberto Duran, a Panamanian boxer who was part of the dominant Fabulous Four during the 1980s.