It’s a story you might’ve heard before: A washed-up champ is offered one last chance to get back in the ring. But for actress Halle Berry, it’s also a fresh start. Following decades of acting, Berry has taken the plunge into the world of directing with the intense drama “Bruised,” which is in a limited theatrical run now and streaming on Netflix starting Nov. 24. The Argus watched the film early and joined a round table discussion with Berry, who, in addition to directing the film, stars as former mixed martial arts fighter Jackie Justice.

When the film opens, Jackie is near rock bottom. Once a rising star in the world of MMA, we learn that five years ago she left the cage mid-fight and never returned. Now, she lives in a dilapidated apartment in Newark, N.J., finding unreliable cleaning jobs and dealing with a toxic relationship with her abusive boyfriend and former manager Desi (Adan Canto).

But two separate events threaten to turn Jackie’s world upside down. She’s offered a chance to return to MMA and participate in a championship bout with a fighter known as Lady Killer (real-life UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion Valentina Shevchenko). At the same time, Jackie’s mother (Adriane Lenox) appears on her doorstep with a silent young boy named Manny (Danny Boyd Jr.). Manny, it turns out, is Jackie’s son, returning to her custody after his father was murdered in a gang dispute. From here, Jackie must learn to grow, both in returning to fighting form as an athlete and in learning to care for the young boy who now relies on her.

“Bruised” was a passion project for Berry, and it shows. A longtime MMA fan, Berry found herself drawn to the script, but had to rework it with screenwriter Michelle Rosenfarb, as Blake Lively was originally attached to the role.

“I had to reimagine the script because it wasn’t written for me, it was written for a 21-year-old Irish Catholic white woman,” Berry said.

While Berry acknowledged the influence of other films about fighters, citing “Rocky,” “Million Dollar Baby,” and “The Wrestler” among her favorites, she argued that “Bruised,” by its very premise, brings something new to the storied subgenre.

“I would have to have a different perspective, a different point of view [from those other films], and we had never seen one from the perspective of a Black woman in the inner city,” Berry said. “I thought that was reason enough to have another stab at it.”

Indeed, Berry’s powerful performance shines, and the dynamics of race and age add greater depth to the character of Jackie. However, two key elements likely remaining from Rosenfarb’s original script confuse things. Berry is 55 and filmed “Bruised” at 53, so it might seem safe to assume the character is the same age. The plot, though, states that Jackie was beginning an MMA career and gave birth to Manny 6 years prior. 

Though, certainly, neither of these life events are impossible, one would think a rising MMA star being around 50 in a sport where all the current champions are a decade or two younger would be, if nothing else, noteworthy. Yet the film never states anything as such. Of course, it is also possible that Jackie is intended to be much younger than Berry. However, the film muddies whatever point it intends to make about the capability of middle-aged women by making it unclear as to whether our protagonist is meant to be one. 

This dynamic, of Berry’s strong leading lady straining against the limits of a weak script, is the prevailing one of “Bruised.” Particularly frustrating is the shallowly-depicted cavalcade of misery Jackie is subjected to: over the course of the 2-hour runtime, Jackie faces off against poverty, homelessness, domestic abuse, sexual violence, alcohol, drug addiction, crime, and the traumas stemming from all these. 

“These are issues that many families suffer with,” Berry explained during the round table. “Sometimes, they’re issues we don’t like to talk about and they become taboo, the things that happen to us, especially as women. There’s a lot of abuse, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, that happens to women that never gets talked about.”

While what Berry says is certainly true, Rosenfarb’s script doesn’t do these myriad issues justice, instead relegating most of them to the status of misery window dressing in the background of the central sports drama. Indeed, some of them are only brought up for a single scene, their purpose seemingly being only to heighten the stakes rather than fully be explored. Berry’s raw and intimate direction can’t help but emphasize the shallowness of the script she is working with. 

While many of the emotional plot threads don’t extend far, one truly does. When Jackie returns to the gym to prepare for her big bout, she encounters your standard sports movie archetypes: the calculating manager, Immaculate (Shamier Anderson), and the kind, wise old man Pops (a tragically underused Stephen McKinley Henderson). But her primary trainer, Buddhakan (Sheila Atim), brings an entirely new energy to the film. Atim shows both great focus and discipline in her training work while hiding a sensitive soul underneath, and the growing bond between Buddhakan and Jackie rings the truest of anything in “Bruised.”

“[The actor] had to be someone that was otherworldly, that had subtlety, great strength, and vulnerability,” Berry said on casting Atim. “She was the first character I cast.”

Another highlight is the film’s depiction of the central MMA sequences. While the movie isn’t action-packed by any means, the opening and climactic fights are genuinely gripping, enhanced by Berry’s powerful physicality as she goes toe-to-toe with real-life fighters. To pull these scenes off, Berry underwent intense training.

“It is the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my professional career,” Berry said. “I’d been an actor for 30 years, but I had to do two and a half, almost three years of training to prepare because when shoot day came, I knew I had to be able to perform these moves as if they were somehow second nature to me. That took time, repetition, learning, and training.”

Building off of the training she did for her role in “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” (2019), Berry said that, in preparation for “Bruised,” she underwent every form of training real-life MMA fighters do, and the results show onscreen. 

With such excellent standout moments as the fight sequences and Jackie’s emotional conversations with Buddhakan, the film’s weaker moments stand out even more. This sense of unevenness trickles down even to the film’s use of music. For most of the runtime, composer Terence Blanchard does admirable, gentle work on the score. But when an emotional scene features an ultra-cliche needle drop of a piano rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” it’s groan inducing. Like much of Jackie’s path to redemption, it feels predictable, something that’s been depicted too many times before. 

“Bruised” also boasts a high profile hip-hop soundtrack, with appearances by Cardi B, Saweetie, City Girls, and more. But some of these songs feel awkwardly employed, or downright misused. When a moment of sadness and failure is punctuated by a braggadocious, pump-up rap song, the dissonance weakens the film’s impact. 

Both behind the camera and in front of it, Berry clearly gave her all to “Bruised,” and hopes that its emotional themes will resonate with viewers. 

“I hope that, by watching this movie, for people who don’t understand this world, for people whose world is nothing like this world, I hope they will find compassion and find ways to understand others,” she said. “If it’s hard to watch, imagine having to live it, because it’s true. For people who see themselves reflected in it, as I do, I hope they will feel validated by its existence, and feel that forgiveness and redemption is in store with them, that they deserve another chance. At the end of the day, it’s very hopeful, and I hope that’s what people will take away from it.”

Ultimately, “Bruised” feels like an unwieldy film that, despite many highlights, should have either done more or tried to do less. It has a strong central performance and marks a promising directorial debut for Berry, but ultimately struggles with the weight of its sprawling script and predictable storyline whose tropes have been done before, better. Like a washed-up fighter, you want to root for “Bruised,” but it isn’t at the top of its game. 

Oscar Kim Bauman can be reached at obauman@wesleyan.edu.