The Heart Punch: A Heavy Dose of Old-School Guilt

Is it worth your time?

Honestly? Only if you have a massive soft spot for grainy, melodramatic black-and-white stuff from back in the day. If you want a nuanced look at trauma, go watch something else. But if you like seeing people make terrible life choices while staring intensely into the middle distance, you’ll probably find something to latch onto here. The plot moves fast, which is good, because it doesn't give you much time to question why the sister would even look at the guy who basically ended her brother.

The whole thing kicks off with a boxing match that goes wrong. It’s clunky, as you'd expect, but the sound of the thuds against the canvas is weirdly sharp. Then the movie just drops the sports angle and pivots straight into a weird, uncomfortable romance. It’s like the writers realized the boxing part was just the excuse to get to the awkward family dinners.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Heart Punch (1932) through its definitive frames.

Lloyd Hughes plays the boxer with this constant look of, "Wait, am I the bad guy?" plastered on his face. It’s kind of funny after a while. Every time he’s in the frame, he’s either looking at his hands like they’re cursed or looking at the sister like she’s a ghost. It’s subtle as a brick, but I kind of liked it.

Odd bits and pieces

• The boxing match choreography has that 1930s "I'm just waving my arms near your chin" energy.
• The sister's house looks suspiciously like a set that was used for three other movies that same month.
• There’s a scene in a hallway that lasts way too long, just people walking and saying nothing. It felt like I was waiting for a bus.

Comparing this to something like Cuerpo y alma feels like a stretch, mostly because the tone here is so much thinner. It doesn't have that same weight or style. It feels like a quick job, something knocked out over a few weeks of shooting in the corner of a studio lot.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Heart Punch (1932) through its definitive frames.

The dialogue is mostly just people explaining their feelings to each other in case the audience got lost. "I feel sad," they say, or "I am angry." It’s nice to have things spelled out, I guess? But sometimes I just wanted them to stop talking and stare at a lamp for a bit. It might have been more interesting.

I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but it’s not a complete waste of an afternoon either. It’s just… there. Like a dusty book you find in an attic. You’ll read it, you’ll be mildly confused by the ending, and then you’ll probably forget about it by dinner time. 🥊