Kid Gloves

2012, 90 minutes

Fred is a business executive at a debt recovery firm but he’s on his way out; his aggressive younger boss thinks he’s past it and demotes him to work in the call centre.

t’s 1972, and teenager Fred Dobbs is preparing for his first fight at the Schoolboy Boxing Championships. His trainer, who also happens to be his father, thinks he’s the next great white hope. Two years of training have led up to this climatic night. There’s just one problem. Fred can’t box. In the same year Gustavo White, a Cuban boxing legend in the making, prepares for the biggest fight of his life at the Munich Olympic games. Every second of the 25 years he has been on earth have been leading up to this challenge – he is widely tipped to take gold in the welterweight division. He doesn’t. Adrift and alone, the two men’s paths cross almost 40 years later in London. Fred is a business executive at a debt recovery firm but he’s on his way out; his aggressive younger boss thinks he’s past it and demotes him to work in the call centre. Gustavo has turned his back on boxing – far from home, with the boxing club he formed bankrupt and repossessed, he is scratching a living as a gardener and handyman. With both men at their lowest ebb, Fred is forced to participate in a work yuppie boxing event. Gus agrees to train him and both men are thrown back into the boxing fray for what will be the most important fight of their lives.