Un ragazzo tutto americano

Jon Voigt has endless possibilities in front of him, so he heads down to Vacaville, gets Ned Glass as a trainer/manager and starts getting ready to become a great boxer. But things come too easy to him -- women most especially -- so he never has to commit to anything until it's too late.

Jon Voigt has proven himself a willing and bold actor over the decades, but he gives a closed and boring performance in this long-winded and turgid story about "the Many Art in Six Rounds". It was an era in which important movies had anti-heroes and old values were dead, so this movie was pulled off the shelf after MIDNIGHT COWBOY had made Voigt a star.... and it flopped hard.

It flopped because it's a bad story, a story about someone who threw it all away for no reason but laziness and fear and unwillingness to commit. It's not a message that anyone really needs to hear: "Don't be afraid to work hard and commit to a goal. That's the way to succeed." We all know it, even if we can't do it ourselves. We don't need a precautionary tale to tell us that.