Based on the true story of welterweight boxing champion Barney Ross, Andre De Toth's Monkey On My Back chronicles the meteoric rise to fame and subsequent fall from grace of a man whose addictive personality took him down a dark path. A successful prize fighter, Ross put his career on hold and joined the Marines at the outset of WWII. Highly decorated in combat, Ross contracts malaria while fighting oversees but he soon finds himself struggling with Morphine addiction. Returning to the states, Ross has become a full-blown drug addict, struggling with a deep narcotics dependency that threatens to derail Ross' entire life. Andre De Toth's Monkey On My Back is a powerful examination of addiction, showing how even someone as strong as welterweight champion Barney Ross is no match for narcotics dependency. With a narrative that feels epic in scale, De Toth gives an intricate portrait of Barney Ross, showing the viewer a man who lives life too fast, always looking for the next adrenaline rush. Even from the onset, De Toth suggests that Ross has an addictive personality, always looking for the next thrill, and typically getting it through gambling. While a compelling narrative and character study, what really stands out about Monkey On My Back is its candid look at addiction, with De Toth using some phenomenal surrealist touches that effectively captures Ross's tortured psyche. Well-crated and featuring a strong central performance by Cameron Mitchell who captures Barney Ross' tortured soul in vivid detail, Monkey On The Back is a harrowing study of drug addiction that pulls no punches.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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