R | 1h 44m | Sports, Thriller | 2025
In “Uppercut,” a young, German female wannabe pugilist named Toni Williams (Luise Grossmann), attempts to persuade legendary boxing trainer Elliot Duffond (Ving Rhames of “Pulp Fiction” and “Mission Impossible”) to take her on as a student.
It’s basically a bare-bones, low-budget German remake of Clint Eastwood’s 2004 Oscar-winning “Million Dollar Baby,” written and directed by English-language, feature-film debuting Torsten Ruether. “Uppercut” is an adaptation of Ruether’s film “Leberhaken” (2021). Both the German and English versions have Grossmann, a former professional pole vaulter-turned-actress, in the lead role.
Jäckson Knows Germans
Now, having spent five years living in Germany, I’m very well-acquainted with the German psyche and culture. And so, what we have in “Uppercut” is a German director who said to himself: “Ja! I go to Amerika und make kool boxing movie mit Elmore Leonard-type script, und jäzz und blues soundtreck, und ze great bleck äctor, Ving Rhames. It vill be even kooler zan Amerikans, zemselves, can mek.”What It Is
The opening shot has a German woman attempting to speak AAVE (African American Vernacular English) with a heavy German accent that puts the Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hilarious murder of the English language to shame. Arnold always knew his accent was the stuff of high comedy and owned it. But the German lead actress of “Uppercut” tries sounding like she’s from Harlem in the 1970s, but without a trace of irony.
True to genre form, he turns her down. But she’s incredibly persistent and willing to help him clean the gym. She also eagerly demonstrates, via improvisational interpretive dance, a shared enthusiasm for the country music group formerly known as The Dixie Chicks. Lastly, she does mangled impressions of what are more or less Muhammed Ali’s greatest hits of poetic opponent put-downs. All of the above somehow persuade him to give her a chance.
How It Came to Be
“Leberhaken” opened the Oldenburg Film Festival in 2021, whereupon American producers approached Ruether with the idea of doing an American, English-speaking remake. Ruether gave them two versions: A stripped-down art-house version and this more mainstream version.What I discovered, living in Germany, is that there is no such thing as stupid Germans. They’re all highly intelligent, educated, and trained. Like, you can’t just go get a summer job painting houses like we do in America. You need to go to school for that and get a degree in house painting.
And so they think Americans, generally speaking, are stupid. I live near New York City’s Times Square and inadvertently eavesdrop on German tourists constantly, who declare, without fail, that our beer (Bier) and hotdogs (Würst) are terrible. This is of course true.
I’m reminded of the early ‘90s beer commercial featuring a stand-up comic tapping the mic. “Iz ziss thing on? Ja hallo! I am Jürgen, I just flew in from Berlin—boy, are my arms tired! Senk you! I be here all ze veek.” And the tag line: “Germans. They don’t do comedy. They do beer.”
Germans don’t really do American movies either. I will say though, that the best thing about “Uppercut” is that, unlike Clint Eastwood’s movie, there’s no brain-dead lady boxer at the end.
