FIST FIGHT
US, 2017, 91 minutes, Colour.
Charlie Day, Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Jo Anna Swisher, Dennis Haysbert.
Directed by Richie Keen.
An American comedy, loud, aggressive, only for those who like their comedies basic. Other audiences will quickly turn off.
The film has a school setting. It is the last day of classes and the students have created all kinds of pranks, pretty excessive pranks, all over the school involving paint, glue, rude and obscene images and gestures, complete disrespect.
However, one of the teachers, played by Ice Cube, Is a very strict disciplinarian and instils fear on everyone, students and staff alike. On the other hand, there is Charlie Day, rather gentle, trying to teach English, the butt of student jokes, preoccupied because his wife is pregnant and about to give birth. And everybody’s job is on the line at the end of the school year, the principal, Dean Norris, wanting interviews with everyone (although his documents are glued, his drawers trashed, his car painted over…).
Tracy Morgan is the sports master and Jilian Bell is a sex-preoccupied counsellor who obviously needs counselling herself and comes out with quite a range of inappropriate comments throughout the film. Christina Hendricks is a malicious teacher who misinterprets Charlie Day’s helping a student and targets him.
Kumail and Nngiani has a supporting role – but, later in 2017 had a great hit with a film he co-wrote with his wife and starred in, The Big Sick.
Ice Cube has a confrontation with Charlie Day and challenes him to a fist fight after school. There are all kinds of tangles before the fight, Ice Cube losing his job after a violent outburst against one of the students and axing his desk. Charlie Day gets more enmity because he put him in to the principal – later having to get the assistance of the student, who runs all kinds of rackets and drug deals – he has to buy him all kinds of advanced IT as a bribe. He plans to plant drugs in bag and call the police – but it turns out to be alternative.
In the meantime, Charlie Day is concerned about his wife with various phone calls. Ultimately, with a lot of challenges, he decides to do the fight and stand up to Ice Cube although trying to get him his job back. The fight is a very raucous sequence, everybody watching – and, as with American comedies, there is a final reconciliation, the education committee found to be doing unethical things for cost cuts, and everybody has their job back. Presumably, in a year’s time, there will be a setting for something like a Fist Fight 2.
