You don’t expect a dark, gritty boxing drama from Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, but that’s exactly what Rumble Through the Dark is. Set in a grim world of fight clubs, liquor stores, traveling carnivals, and orphanages, the film batters its characters and viewers with a story of brutal revenge couched as moral uplift.
Adapting his novel, screenwriter Michael Farris Smith starts Rumble with an infant abandoned by its mother, then skips to an illegal fight club where former champ boxer Jack Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is trying to earn enough money to save his mother’s home.
Self-medicating with alcohol and pills, Jack risks a heart attack with every fight. He’s also losing his memory after repeated blows to the head. Plus he hasn’t paid taxes on his mother’s house, and is deep in debt to fight club proprietress Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). A big score at a local casino might help extricate Jack from his troubles.
But Skelly (Joe Hursley), a bounty hunter hijacks Jack and his truck from a gas station. Their subsequent fight on a highway leads to a stylishly shot crash through a corn field that leaves Jack unconscious and Skelly near death.
Make that dead after a passing carnival operator asphyxiates him in a mercy killing. Annette (Bella Thorne), a tattooed fortune teller in the carnival, finds Jack’s cash in an envelope and pockets it as Jack watches from nearby.
The film switches storylines to Annette, an orphan searching for her father. She’s unsure about keeping the money, especially after she’s threatened by tilt-a-whirl operator and ex-con Ricky Joe (Mike McCall). When Jack rescues her from Ricky Joe at a convenience store, Annette thinks he’s been sent as a sign.
Annette tails Jack, learning that his mother suffers from dementia in a nursing home. Clues convince her that Jack is her father. But first Jack has to fight one more cage match to appease Big Momma Sweet.
Directors and brothers Graham and Parker Phillips have a good feel for the film’s backwater bayou milieu. The cinematography by David J. Myrick is appropriately dark and moody, but the directors find ways to highlight the futile desperation in their characters.
That said, Michael Farris Smith’s plotting is too derivative. One or two twists and Rumble could be Nightmare Alley, a Gothic filled with con men and born losers. Take two steps the other way, and this is a Southern-fried Fight Club, complete with pointed messages and telegraphed symbolism. Rumble is compelling enough in a grungy way, but it is not offering anything new.
Aaron Eckhart has made a career out of over-performing in vehicles that don’t deserve him. He’s all sinew and bone here, spitting blood, tearing up motel rooms, hallucinating about his mom. He elevates Rumble considerably, but never quite rescues it.
What about Bella Thorne? Annette reminded me of her title role in Girl, an underrated thriller written and directed by Chad Faust that came out during Covid. There she played someone not especially well-educated, but fiercely committed to her goals. Here she’s equally determined to find some way to connect to Jack Boucher.
Thorne doesn’t have the same level of support in Rumble that she did in Girl, but she does what she’s asked to do the best she can. Like everything else in Rumble Through the Dark, it’s not quite enough.
Opening in theaters through Lionsgate on November 3, 2023.
Photos courtesy Crooked Letter Picture Company.
Credits: Produced and directed by Graham Phillips, Parker Phillips. Produced by Cassian Elwes, Cleta Ellington. Written by Michael Farris Smith. Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Bella Thorne, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Ritchie Coster, Amanda Saunders, Mike McColl, Christopher Winchester, Joe Hursley.
