Grudge Match is officially listed as a sports comedy but there’s enough meat to the story to classify it as a drama as well.   Two ageing boxers are coerced by circumstances into a final clash of the two titans that was to take place some 30 years earlier. 

Every character in the movie has been delivered an upper cut by life and has yet to recover.  Instead they all hang on to their resentment without taking the time to examine it.  Buddhism holds that: “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”  As the plot progresses, each character is forced to examine their own role in their misfortune and they come to accept responsibility for their part in the way their lives turned out. 

As for acting performances one might suspect that Sylvester Stallone coming from an action movie background would be laid out quickly by dramatically seasoned Robert DeNiro but that wasn’t the case.  Both actors were able to roll with the punches with the only criticism being that both performances were a little hyperbolic probably due to the films perception as a comedy rather than a drama.

To label this movie a ‘boxing movie’ is to fail to realize the deeper message of the movie.  As the characters let blow after blow reign down on each other, they simultaneously pound out the vitriol they had so long carried.  By the end, despite their physical wounds, their souls were mended and there was a passing allusion to the possibility of future friendship – at the very least, mutual understanding.