Shadowboxer (2005)
Average Rating: 3.9/10
Reviews Counted: 56
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 46
With random characters and a preposterous plot, this bizarre thriller might leave you with your mouth hanging open in disbelief.
Average Rating: 3.6/10
Critic Reviews: 22
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 20
With random characters and a preposterous plot, this bizarre thriller might leave you with your mouth hanging open in disbelief.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 64,787
My Rating
Movie Info
A late-career change of heart leads to a dangerous life on the run for two seasoned assassins whose complex relationship masks a dark past in director Lee Daniels' pulpy film noir. When Mickey (Cuba Gooding Jr.) was just a child, his abusive father savagely murdered the young boy's mother shortly before being gunned down by Rose (Helen Mirren), Mickey's stepmother. Twenty years later, Mickey and Rose are not only working together as hired killers, but they have grown to become lovers as well.
Cast
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Cuba Gooding Jr.
Mikey -
Helen Mirren
Rose -
Vanessa Ferlito
Vickie -
Macy Gray
Neisha -
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Dr. Don -
Mo'Nique
Precious -
Stephen Dorff
Clayton -
Ryan Sands
Ramone -
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Shadowboxer Trailer & Photos
All Critics (60) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (47) | DVD (7)
Thumbs down to a movie of such vile and violent temper.
Top CriticGosh, it's almost too bad/good to be true.
The one thing I'll say about Shadowboxer is that it's never boring. Of course, I could also say that about stepping on crushed glass.
It ... has an insistently fussy and grandiose production design that mistakes lavish textures, brilliant colors and exotic backdrops for story atmosphere and style.
It tells a story that would fit perfectly in a standard Hollywood action thriller, but it tells it in the grammar and syntax of an art film. The two sensibilities make no sense together.
Arresting performances by Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. are squandered on a moody thriller that has way too much mood and not nearly enough thrills.
Aaron Spelling may be slapping his forehead, but a few cemetary plots over, 1950's melodrama king Douglas Sirk is smiling.
The raw materials for a gutsy, gritty, fearless, fascinating thriller are here, but they amount to some intriguing individual parts and not a satisfying, cohesive whole.
This cat-and-mouse caper's Swiss cheese plotline is riddled with too many holes to consider this flick as much more than a snuff film.
Despite assembling a talented cast and crew, Daniels is stymied here by a script that takes itself far too seriously.
That most wonderful of films, the kind that works on every level, but can't be easily pigeonholed.
Mirren and Gooding are interesting -- and sexy -- to watch together. Once she leaves the film, the picture loses a bit of its uniqueness.
that most wonderful of films, the kind that works on every level, but can't be easily pigeonholed
Though generally well-acted, it is rendered by director Lee Daniels with such stifling pretension and aggressive weirdness that it becomes an unintentional art-film parody.
The script can't quite get a grasp on character depth, yet it also can't quite deliver the cheap thrills such a trashy tale might otherwise provide.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mo'Nique as lovers? Now we've seen everything.
"Shadowboxer" is supposed to be concerned with how parents' lifestyles can be passed down to their children, but that is too simplistic here. The film, instead, is more a showcase of naked bodies, gory scenarios and over-the-top performances.
It's all so cliched in terms of personalities and full of such unbelievable situations that it's often downright laughable. And not in a good way.
There's no glee here, just a handful of glum characters stuck in an unending cycle of sex, violence, and heavy-handed preaching.
Much of the movie is just too unintentionally goofy to take at face value
The title [is] an apt metaphor for the movie, which ultimately bobs and weaves a lot but ends up all empty air.
Audience Reviews for Shadowboxer
Super Reviewer
A mother and her stepson have a romantic relationship while working as contract killers, but soon they learn there is someone trying to hunt them down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I actually don't know how to explain this movie. It was a bit disturbing. But the story was really interesting. Helen Mirren was great in this movie. I really liked Cuba Gooding Jr's performance. This whole movie was something you felt kinda wrong for watching but you can't help to, cause of the story, and you want to see where it goes. First movie I have ever watched with Vanessa Ferlito I believe. Thought she was great. It's definitely a movie worth seeing. The characters had some odd love interests that surprised me. Not so much in a good way. Kinda made me cringe, but not in disgust or anything, just uncomfortable. LOL. I watched this movie cause it has some of my favorite actors in it. Turned out to be a little bit more interesting then I thought it would be, and some things took me by surprise, but its a film I would possibly watch again.
Super Reviewer
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Lee Daniels's, the director behind Precious, debut is an attempt at a thriller, but it's in the guise of an art film with all of the pretension and none of the art. There are long sequences during which the actors emote and look vaguely troubled, and the stylized violence that is supposed to look cool, an imitation of Tarantino. Even the characters are reminiscent of Tarantino, and Daniels's addition is a unmentioned and unexplained mismatch of romantic couples. The 100-pound Joseph Gordon-Levitt is paired with the ... uh ... over-100-pound Mo'Nique, and the thirty-eight-year-old Cuba Gooding Jr is paired with sixty-one-year-old Helen Mirren. The latter match is explained by an odd step-Oedipal complex, but suffice it to say that I think these matches are Daniels's attempt at liberal multiculturalism, saying that love transcends looks, age, and race, but it all comes at the expense of verisimilitude.
I did enjoy the performances in parts, especially by Stephen Dorff as the psycho boyfriend, but overall, there isn't much that could redeem this film.