Bruiser

AFI FEST 2022 REVIEW! Miles Warren’s achingly real drama Bruiser will blow you away. It will leave you wrung but elated, embittered but hopeful. How refreshing to watch a feature that doesn’t tout trendy ideologies or rely on cheap gimmicks to pander to audiences. Instead, the filmmaker, along with his co-writer Ben Medina, hold you rapt with the sincerity and rawness of the vast emotional spectrum they portray. It’s really rather remarkable that this drama marks Warren’s feature-length debut. The young man has a bright future ahead of him.

14-year-old Darious (Jalyn Hall) comes home from school to discover his friends gone, his mother, Monica (Shinelle Azoroh), still playing the same annoying old tune in the car, and his father, Malcolm (Shamier Anderson), refusing to buy him a new bike. Blissfully unaware that most of his parent’s finances were invested in his preppy education, angst-ridden Darious finds no reassurance in the local bullies, who leave him bruised and frustrated. Soon, however, the young man does find solace in Porter (Trevante Rhodes), a large, muscular loner living in a boat. Porter knows how to fight and possesses an affinity for Kubrick films. The two form a bond, and then Monica and Malcolm find out about it.

As tempting as it is to reveal what happens next, I won’t spoil the main twist of Bruiser. Let’s just say Darious’ parents have a certain relation to Porter. An intense series of confrontations ensues. Warren wisely spreads out the violent moments so that when they do arrive, they’re deeply visceral. One punch in particular almost shatters the fourth wall. You may see the denouement coming, but it still scars the soul.

“…the young man does find solace in Porter, a loner living in a boat…”

Friendship, bullying, coming of age, class differences, trust, male toxicity. These are just some of the themes Warren elegantly lays out and studies. The primary one is the effect our parents have on us, the mistakes they make, and how they affect us. None of this is forced down our gullet, like so many other films of its ilk tend to do, via extended speeches or nauseatingly manipulative musical swells.

The filmmaker composes little poignant sequences throughout Bruiser that speak volumes: Darious struggling to work out with giant weights; father and son chuckling at the sounds of mom teaching an incompetent music student how to play an instrument; Monica allowing her son to drive; Darious and Porter enjoying a Ferris wheel ride. These shining moments strung together result in a vibrant, luminescent film.

The cast is uniformly magnificent. Rhodes, so brilliant in Moonlight, again delivers a powerful performance, charismatic and intimidating. Sporting a thick faux-leather motorcycle jacket with a skeleton on it, he commands attention just by being on the screen. But the little nuances, like how he tilts his head when he talks, the slightly forced swagger to his intonations, and the corrupted good intentions in his eyes, ultimately paint such a vivid character. Azoroh is tremendously subtle and sophisticated, trying to do what’s best for her son and attempting to cool her husband’s burgeoning resentment. She and Anderson play off each other splendidly, making you sympathize with their struggles and mistakes.

There are no “bad” characters here. An easy comparison would be Trey Edward Shults’s Waves in terms of how both films deal with generational trauma and the damage our elders (sometimes) unknowingly inflict upon us. However, instead of adopting Shults’s epic, generation-spanning approach, Bruiser focuses on a brief but life-defining moment, revealing arguably just as much but more succinctly. Warren’s film may leave you bruised, but don’t let that stop you from seeking it out.

Bruiser screened at the 2022 AFI Fest.