In boxing, a journeyman refers to a fighter with moderate skill who doesn’t quite reach the level of a prize fighter: a lost soul drifting from fight to fight. Matty Burton (Considine, who also writes and directs) is no journeyman in this sense: he’s a veteran of the sport, a middleweight boxing champion with a glittering career under his belt and retirement in his sights. The title of Considine’s second directorial effort, then, refers to a far more internal journey.
This is not your average boxing movie — which, given we have seen your average boxing movie umpteen times before, is a relief. Considine is canny enough to realise that the boxing-as-redemption arc has been played out, and indeed, Matty needs no redemption: he’s a class act, a family man looking to cement his reputation by bowing out undefeated. During the press conference prior to what we assume will be his swansong fight, he encounters the usual chest-thumping showdown from a cocky young pretender nicknamed ‘The Future’ (Anthony Welsh), who insists their title fight is a “life changer”. He’s proven correct — though not in the way either of them might have expected.
Considine is astonishing as a broken man attempting to put himself back together.
It’s never stated what happens to Matty, but it’s clear he undergoes a life-changing brain injury that fundamentally changes him as a person, morphing from a slick sports celebrity into a vulnerable and unpredictable trauma patient, unable to function without a carer. What follows is a gruelling journey of recovery, by no means unique to the sport of boxing, but certainly unique to boxing movies.
Considine’s directing style has softened since the sharp, shocking debut of Tyrannosaur, which tackled a different type of trauma with a different approach. This is broader, and ultimately brighter — though it’s undeniably bleak, retaining Tyrannosaur’s social realism, particularly in the rehab scenes, which niftily subvert the training montage trope.
It is arguably structured a little predictably, and is wrapped up too tidily after such a messy road. But where Journeyman sings is in its performances. Jodie Whittaker puts in a humane, well-rounded turn as Matty’s heartbroken wife; far from being a peripheral also-ran, she is afforded her own journey, a tribute to the strains of full-time caring.
But it’s Considine’s showcase. He is astonishing as a broken man attempting to put himself back together, combining precise nuances and physical tics with a devastating well of complex, confused emotions. Having propped up an array of other people’s films, this is perhaps his first dramatic lead role since 2004’s Dead Man’s Shoes, and a salutary reminder that he is one of our finest, most versatile talents. Rumblings from his social media seemed to suggest that Considine was feeling the lure of a real-life retirement, but let’s hope they’re just rumblings — he surely has a few more bouts left in him.
