Broken Noses (1992)

What do you get when you put fashion photographer-turned-moviemaker Bruce Weber together with a small-time boxer who never quite made it? An entertaining bit of celluloid schizophrenia called Broken Noses, that can't decide whether it's a documentary or an art flick. Weber's subject, 25-year-old Andy Minsker, is a diamond in the roughhouse: a sincere lower-class palooka who made it to the Olympic trials before running afoul of what he claims was racism. By 1987, the time of this film, Minsker is coaching young kids in his hometown, Portland, Ore., but in no way is he bitter. Problem is, Weber films everything as if it were one of his Calvin Klein spreads — lots of gauzy black and white and an overweening interest in men's chest muscles. And aestheticizing the plain-dealing Andy Minsker does him a disservice. Beautiful as Broken Noses is to look at, it sees its subject as glamorous meat. B