By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.
Why has there never been a Joe Louis video game? Buster Douglas has his own video game and his only rise to fame was being the first boxer to defeat Mike Tyson.
You could play as Joe Louis in Entertainment Art’s “Knockout Kings.” And the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 “Fight Night Champion” gave you the option of fighting as Louis as well. Both are exceptional boxing games. On so many nights in college, I played “Knockout Kings” until 2 a.m. with my friends.
Many young people don’t know how dominate Joe Louis was throughout his career. The “Brown Bomber” had a lifetime boxing record of 66-3. He has the longest single reign as champion of any boxer in history; from 1937 to 1949. There should be a video game centred around Louis for that long reign as champion alone. People under thirty know his name, but do they know how exceptional he was in his boxing prime?
One of the worst sports films I ever watched was “The Joe Louis Story.” The 1953 film was a turkey of a biopic on Louis’ life.
It has a horribly acted, cheesy opening where a depressed sportswriter is sitting at his desk and he cradles up to his typewriter and says, “I’ll write the real story.” He does an atrocious job narrating the film.
Coley Wallace, who plays Joe Louis, smiles a lot throughout the film. He is unprofessional and his delivery of dialogue sounds like he memorized it just before the cameras started rolling. He may’ve been cast just because he resembles Louis; it certainly wasn’t for his acting chops. There are moments during the film when it appears Wallace doesn’t know where his mark is. It’s awkward. You would think a producer or studio executive would’ve noticed that while watching a final cut?
The boxing scenes are not well crafted, choreographed violence like in “Raging Bull” and “Creed,” they’re documentary-like footage of Joe Louis’ fights. I guess that’s because the film had a small budget. It totally takes you out of the narrative of the film; a narrative that is already weak and unsteady.
In the middle of the movie, there is also a strange musical number that takes place in a nightclub that comes out of left field. It’s so kitschy; it makes you wonder if someone on the production owed the singer a favour.
There was nothing boring about the “Brown Bomber’s” life. We need a great video game and film about the Detroit native’s life.
