When the daughter of his trainer dies of a drug overdose at his house, world light heavyweight champion Travis Austin (Lee Kholafai) takes the blame and goes to prison, even though the drugs were brought into his house by his sparring partner, Joe (Brandon Sklenar).
After four years of being incarcerated, Travis is released into a brand new world. His wife (Korrina Rico), who waited for his release and only cheated on him once in a moment of weakness, now works as a waitress and lives in a small apartment. Joe is now not only the light heavyweight champion but also refuses to help Travis get back on his feet. Travis finally ends up working at a gym, owned by the cantankerous Frank Maloney (Mark Rolston). It’s a tough life but an unexpected opportunity gives Travis a chance to win back his title.
Glass Jaw pretty much lost me as soon as Travis decided to take the rap and go to prison for something that Joe was responsible for. Being loyal is one thing but being stupid is something else and, by taking the fall, Travis put his wife in a terrible position. The film had all of the usual boxing cliches but the Big Fight at the end was strangely anti-climatic, even if both Kholafai and Sklenar looked credible while they were throwing punches at each other.
The best performance in the film was delivered by Jon Gries, who had a small role as Travis’s alcoholic father. I would have liked for the entire movie to have been about his character.
In 1995, an 11 year-old boy named Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) lives in Philadelphia.
He has two loving parents. He lives in a nice house. He has his fist crush, on his classmate Sally (voiced by Shino Nakamichi). He has a bully (voiced by Jack Fisher) who enjoys giving him a hard time and he has several notebooks full of his thoughts and drawings. He also has a lot of fears.
Indeed, it’s his fears that largely define Orion. Some of his fears are understandable. I don’t like wasps or murder clowns either. Some of his other fears are a bit more elaborate. He’s scared of his bully but he’s even more scared of fighting his bully because he might accidentally break the bully’s nose and drive a piece of bone into the bully’s brain, therefore killing him. His biggest fear, however, is his fear of the Dark.
In fact, Orion spends so much time talking about how much he hates the dark and how scared he is of the dark that Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) appears to him in human form and explain that he’s getting tired of Orion blaming him for anything. Dark takes Orion with him as he travels across the world, bringing darkness to various countries and overseeing various other elements, like Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), and Sleep (Natasia Demetriou). Dark shows Orion that there’s no need to scared of the dark and that everyone involved is just doing their job. Orion comes to understand and appreciate Dark but, when he makes the mistake of saying that he still kind of likes Light (voice by Ike Barinholtz) better, it leads to a lot of hurt feelings and resignations….
If this sounds a bit weird, one should keep in mind that the story is being told by the adult Orion (voiced by Colin Hanks) to his daughter, Hypathia (Mia Akemi Brown). Adult Orion is telling the story to help Hypathia deal with her own fears and it soon becomes obvious that he’s making it up as he goes along. Hypathia is aware of this and has no hesitation about calling out the stuff that doesn’t make any sense. And when Orion proves incapable of coming up with a satisfactory ending for his story, Hypathia jumps into the story herself in an attempt to bring it all to a proper conclusion. But once she’s in the story, can she get back out?
Orion and the Dark may sound like a standard “conquer your fears and believe in yourself” animated film but the script was written by Charlie Kaufman and, in typical Kaufman fashion, the story is full of twists and turns and more than a few moments of commentary on the whole act of storytelling itself. There’s actually a lot going on in Orion and the Dark, with the film ultimately becoming a tribute to the power of imagination and to all of the parents-turned-storytellers in the world.
I’m a bit notorious for crying while watching animated films and I will say that Orion and the Dark brought tears to my eyes more than a few times. It’s an incredibly sweet movie, one that can be appreciated by both children and adults. It’s a movie about not just conquering fears but also using those fears to make oneself stronger. The final message is that light cannot exist without the dark and vice versa but that’s okay. There’s much to love in the light but the dark can be lovable too. Fear is a part of life but it’s not the only part of life.
Creatively-animated and featuring a strong cast of voice actors, Orion and the Dark is definitely one to check out.
When the daughter of his trainer dies of a drug overdose at his house, world light heavyweight champion Travis Austin (Lee Kholafai) takes the blame and goes to prison, even though the drugs were brought into his house by his sparring partner, Joe (Brandon Sklenar).
Through the Shattered Lens 