Review: Diggstown

James Woods plays slick con artist Gabriel Caine, freshly released from prison, who immediately puts his best talents into action, with his associate Fitz (Oliver Platt, playing drunk as usual). Entering the small town of the film’s title, they are planning on hustling the town’s bigwig Gillon (Bruce Dern, enjoying the hell out of himself) by setting up a huge bet with him; Caine has Fitz denigrate the good name of the town’s boxing hero, Charles Macum Diggs (played as a catatonic by Wilhelm von Homburg), and then along comes Caine to claim that his fighter can take on any ten of Diggstown’s fighters in one 24 hour period and be left standing at the end. The stakes? With financial backing from local gangster Corsini (Orestes Matacena) the game is set, and now all Caine has to do is tell his fighter, "Honey" Roy Palmer (Lou Gossett Jr.), an over the hill pugilist who never quite reached the heights he probably deserved. Palmer knows nothing of the con when approached, and frankly doesn’t like Caine much (Caine probably owes Palmer money), but is eventually roped into the sting. Unsurprisingly, with so much money and pride at stake, both sides attempt to hoodwink one another with ringers, dirty tactics, and other ways of bending the rules set up. Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb turns up as a former con and boxer who first approaches Caine about Gillon’s corrupt stranglehold of the town, whilst Heather Graham plays Cobb’s pretty sister whom Caine rather takes a liking to. Amongst the fighters are Jim Caviezel, Duane Davis, Thomas Wilson Brown (as Gillon’s pussy son), and Willie Greene (as an old foe of Gossett’s named Hammerhead Hagan). Michael DeLorenzo turns up as one of Corsini’s henchmen. Marshall Bell is at his nastiest as Caine’s former prison nemesis, Warden Bates.

Originally called “Midnight Sting” in some corners of the globe like Australia (Why? Because it’s about a con game and “The Sting” was a huge hit?), this underrated 1992 boxing/con artist flick from Michael Ritchie (Popular comedies like “Fletch” and “The Bad News Bears”, and the underrated “The Couch Trip”) won’t win any awards for plausibility. In fact, pugilism enthusiasts might be downright offended by the jokey, sleazy, and unscrupulous goings on here, as the ‘sweet science’ is turned into a big con game. However, you’d have to be in serious need of a humour transplant to be truly bothered by that. I mean, if you don’t laugh at the one-punch fight or the guy who punches Gossett in the nuts and then punches the ref, you really have no sense of humour. That last one is pretty damn hysterical. This is a fun con game featuring some fine actors in terrific form and some amusingly corrupt and very silly boxing bouts.

Woods and Dern are particularly well-cast here, Woods is the right choice for a cocky con-artist (and yet he’s rarely been more likeable), and Dern is seriously punchable here in one of his best roles. The guy is insanely oily in this one, an uber-schmuck of the highest order. His inspiring fight speech to his boxers is priceless, especially when he tells his own son to bash Gossett’s brains in! Gossett, meanwhile, is likeable, if perhaps not the best casting choice for such a role. I know the role asked for someone a bit past his prime, but at 56, Gossett was really pushing it here. There’s no way that someone of his vintage could last so long, rigged or not, and he doesn’t quite have the right physique for even an aging boxer. That said, his participation here does remind me a bit of another, even better con game flick, the somewhat forgotten slavery-era flick “The Skin Game”. Both involve a white guy enlisting the aid of a black guy (Gossett) for a con game, where the black guy is essentially being exploited or taken advantage of. It’s a shame Gossett has essentially pissed away his career with crap “Iron Eagle” sequels and TV movies, because he’s a damn strong actor as anyone who saw him in “Roots” or “The Skin Game” can attest to. Hell, he’s an Oscar winner for cryin’ out loud (“An Officer and a Gentleman”). Oliver Platt is just about the only one who could play the drunk sidekick role so entertainingly, and I only wish he was in more of the film. Yes, he’s typecast, but hey, it’s what he’s good at, so he ends up getting the drunk roles. That’s his thing (“A Time to Kill”, “The Ice Harvest”, “Ready to Rumble”). Lots of familiar faces in the supporting cast too, including a young Heather Graham, boxer-turned-actor Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb (‘Ben Dover’ from Ritchie’s hilarious “Fletch Lives”) in one of his more dramatic roles, and a wonderfully mean Marshall Bell too. Oh, and did you know that Jesus was a boxer? Well he’s here too. I’m not sure on what planet Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb and Heather Graham are believable as brother and sister, but I’ll let that slide.

What I really like in this film is the complexity of the con, how Woods and Platt set it up, how far the rationale behind it goes, and so on. Credit definitely goes to screenwriter Steven McKay (writer of Steven Seagal’s best film “Hard to Kill”) for that, or at least Leonard Wise, author of the novel the film is based on. It’s clever and well thought out, so I honestly don’t understand why more people aren’t into this film. It’s pretty damn fun, non-think entertainment, and one of the best con game comedies since “The Sting”. Terrific, bluesy score by James Newton Howard (“The Fugitive”, “Outbreak”, “Signs”, “The Happening”, “Salt”) helps. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but if you think of it as “Slap Shot” for boxing, it provides solid entertainment nonetheless. Good acting all-round.

Rating: B-