User Reviews

This hysterically bad TV movie takes the cliches of "Golden Boy", "Body and Soul", "Champion" and "The Set-Up" (my favorite of all of these), mixes in a lot of the "Rocky" movies (the third installment came out the year this aired on TV), and comes up with what could have been a camp classic. Erik Estrada revisits his Puerto Rican roots from Harlem by playing a Puerto Rican boxer from Harlem, meets his variation of Barbara Stanwyck in Morgan Fairchild, and begins to rise to the top.

"I'm nobody squeezed. I make my own decisions", she tells him, adding on, "You're just another can of beer to me." There's an obvious lust between Estrada and Fairchild, and certainly, they are a great looking pair on screen. He gets to show off his body very nicely, particularly in a pair of tight red briefs that leaves little to the imagination.

But, as there are already a lot of cliches in films about boxing anyway, there are stereotypes here, especially when she shows up unannounced at his family's door and brings in a bunch of neighbor kids to pretend to be his large family of siblings even though he only has three others. Later, she finds Estrada's estranged father (Hector Elizondo) which creates a lot of drama that he didn't want to have to deal with.

Yvonne Wilder, one of the Shark girls in the movie of "West Side Story", and the "must be prom night" shoe store commercial mother, is hysterical as Estrada's mother, tough talking and loving, laughing inwardly as Fairchild comes in and demands that Estrada remain at home, having just bemoaned the fact that one of her babies was leaving. So while the cliches and some of the stereotypes of how Puerto Rican families are can be a bit eye-rolling, the film is fun on a strictly entertainment level, and of course, the eye candy of the scantily-clad Estrada will keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Erik Estrada is pretty much going to get a whole week of movies on this site before too long but until then, let's look at this movie, in which he plays Rico "Honeyboy'"Ramirez, the son of a boxer (Hector Elizondo) who never made it and walked out on his family.

This was an NBC TV movie of the week and came out while Estrada was fighting with his bosses on CHiPs over his salary. He was replaced on that show by Bruce Jenner, but came back for the last season.

To get to the top, Honeyboy gets a PR agent named Judy Wellman, played by Morgan Fairchild, so this movie had some incredible wattage when it came to early 80s TV starpower. He's on a quest to win the title from Tiger Maddox (Jem Echollas), who claims that the fight promoter that got Honeyboy this far worked all his fights like pro wrestling matches. Or, you know, pro boxing for the most part.

Of course the third act is all Honeyboy chasing away everyone who got him this far, but if you know boxing movies, you know he's going to win. I kind of loved the scene between Sugar Ray Robinson - that's really him - and Honeyboy's father. Their title match was as far as he got and Sugar Ray is pretty much giving him a little bit of recognition and you can see that Emilio doesn't want it but really does want it and it's some masterful acting for such a small moment in such a tiny TV movie and man, I've been thinking about it for several days and it still makes me choke up a little.

This was directed by John Berry, who co-wrote the script with Lee Gold. Berry was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and ended up blacklisted in 1950. He had agreed to direct a short documentary on the Hollywood 10, the group that had refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee as they tried to find Communists in Hollywood. After directing He Ran All the Way, Hollywood 10 member Edward Dmytryk - who had been jailed for contempt of Congress - named Berry as a Communist when he was released from prison as part of his hope to get work in Hollywood again.

Settling in Paris, he co-directed Atoll K, the last comedy film of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and spent the rest of his career there, even after being permitted to make movies in Hollywood again, like The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

Rico Ramirez is a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx not a generic Latino from East L.A.. Puerto Ricans are not immigrants they are U.S. citizens with a unique culture that is both Spanish and American. Great job casting Erik Estrada a native New Yorker as a Puerto Rican from New York. He really got in amazing physical shape for his role (Better than Stallone in the first Rocky). Erik Estrada and the other fighters in the movie knew how to slip, bob and weave and the 5 punches. The tactics and language of the ring was authentic and a very good movie considering it was made for TV.

Seeing actual footage of NY city during the early 80's is a gritty treat. With a bigger budget this could have been a great story to develop into a trilogy or more.