Strong concept, but 'Love Ranch' fails to pack a punch

AMERICA AT LARGE:Stripped of its boxing- and-cathouse milieu, the film is a cheesy soap opera with X-rated language, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

ALTHOUGH IT has long been regarded as Nevada’s second city, Reno was the gambling and divorce capital of the US back when Las Vegas was little more than a highway crossroads with a filling station and a couple of slot machines.

For a few days this weekend the eyes of the boxing world will again be focused on Reno, as it plays host to the centennial anniversary of the July 4th, 1910, “Fight of the Century” in which Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, knocked out the undefeated champion Jim Jeffries.

Through what is largely a coincidence of timing, Reno will also be getting its share of mostly unwelcome publicity over the next few weeks, as the setting for Love Ranch, the Taylor Hackford film starring Joe Pesci and Dame Helen Mirren as “Charlie and Grace Bontempo”, barely- fictionalised representations of Joe and Sally Conforte, who four decades ago operated what was at the time America’s largest and most celebrated legal brothel.

In 1976, the already notorious Mustang Ranch assumed a place in sporting lore as well, when the 33-year-old prizefighter Oscar Bonavena was shot to death there, ostensibly by one of Joe Conforte’s bodyguards, in a dispute that reportedly had its roots in a love triangle involving the first family of Nevada whorehouses and the Argentine boxer – a complicated relationship that serves as the basis for Mark Jacobson’s screenplay.

One of the best heavyweights of his era, Bonavena twice went the distance with Joe Frazier, and came within less than a minute of lasting 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali in 1970 at Madison Square Garden. In the recollection of most who were there, he probably deserved the decision in his first fight against the unbeaten Frazier – and would have got the nod had it been scored by modern standards.

He was nicknamed “Ringo” for his long, curly mane, and while his training regime was less than Spartan, he rarely weighed more than 205lb. In today’s era he would probably be a cruiserweight champion; but his best days were well behind him by the time he came under Conforte’s wing in the mid-1970s.

The brothel owner had calculated that having Bonavena train on his property would provide publicity for the Mustang Ranch. Bonavena, who got his nightly pick of the litter in return, viewed it as a pretty good deal, and the arrangement worked fine until the boxer’s wandering eye settled upon his manager-of- record, who happened to be the madam, and to be Joe’s wife.

Since it tells the tale of a real-life boxer (Bonavena), stars an actor whose breakthrough came in a boxing film (Pesci, in Raging Bull), was written by a sometime fight scribe (Jacobson) and is co-produced by a promoter (Lou DiBella), Love Ranch is inevitably going to be labelled a “boxing movie”. In truth, it’s no more “about” boxing than it is, say, a documentary about houses of ill repute.

Though pivotal to the plot, the film’s protracted and gory fight scene (based on Bonavena’s one fight under the Conforte colours) owes more to the choreography of Rocky than to real-life boxing.

Since “Armando Bruza”, the Bonavena-based character, doesn’t get many choice lines, the guessing here is that in his original concept Jacobson may have anticipated casting a recognisable practising pugilist in the role. This makes the presence of Spanish newcomer Sergio Peris-Mencheta all the more bewildering: if Hackford wasn’t going to use a guy who could box, you might have thought he’d at least cast one who could act.

Probably because it was directed by one Oscar winner (Hackford) and stars two others (Mirren, in real life the director’s wife, and Pesci), the film has been reviewed with more respect than it probably deserves. Last week, New York magazine (to which Jacobson is a contributing editor) gave it a qualified thumbs-up in a fawning story whose raison d’etre seems to have been it provided an excuse to run a nude photo spread of the 64-year-old Mirren.

Since fairly bursting into fame with his scene-stealing role as Jake LaMotta’s brother in Raging Bull, Pesci has fashioned a career in which he has recycled the same character for 30 years. Playing Conforte, a Massachusetts-raised small-time wise guy who adopted a western drawl in the manner of countless other Nevada “businessmen”, offered yet another perfect typecasting opportunity.

The presence of the distinguished Mirren in what, stripped of its boxing-and- cathouse milieu, seems little more than a cheesy, two-hour soap opera with X-rated language, had been openly questioned by even otherwise sympathetic critics. But it strikes me she’s every bit as appropriate for her role as Pesci is for his. That she would agree to appear at all should be proof positive that Dame Helen and “Grace Bontempo” have this much in common: they will both do anything for money.

Although Love Ranch is in no sense a comedy, the casting did allow Jacobson to slip into his script an exchange that provides the film’s only intentionally laugh-out-loud moment.

Mirren, weary of her husband’s western affectation, urges him to get rid of his cowboy hat, asking, “Who do you think you are, Clint Eastwood?”

To which Pesci replies, “And who do you think you are, the Queen of (bleeping) England?”