Shadowboxer
Encyclopedia
Shadowboxer is a 2005
thriller directed by Lee Daniels
that stars Academy Award winners Cuba Gooding, Jr.
, Helen Mirren
, and Mo'Nique. It opened in limited release in six cities: New York
, Los Angeles
, Washington, D.C.
, Baltimore, Philadelphia
, and Richmond, Virginia
.
and contract killers.
Rose is diagnosed with cancer
, as she and Mikey continue with their contract killings. Mafia
kingpin Clayton (Stephen Dorff
) learns that his pregnant wife Vicki (Vanessa Ferlito
) may have had sex with someone else. So Clayton hires Mikey and Rose through an associate to kill her and several of his mob associates who he sees as weak men. Rose and Mikey set out to Clayton's mansion to kill Vicki, after Clayton convinces her he must leave town for two days to work. First, Rose quietly shoots and kills one of Vicki's bodyguards, while hiding in the back seat of his car, when he was sent on a food run. They head to Clayton's mansion to kill Vicki and her bodyguards. Upon entering, Mikey shoots and kills all of the guards while Rose heads for Vicki's bedroom. All the while, Vicki is on the phone with her best friend Neisha, (Macy Gray
)
and is unaware of her bodyguards being killed. Rose enters Vicki's bedroom, but just as Rose is about to carry out the contract on Vicki, her water breaks and she goes into labor
. Rose helps Vicki deliver her baby, which turned out to be a boy. Afterwards, Mikey and Rose drive Vicki and her infant son to a local motel. Mikey, at Rose's request, calls Dr. Don (Joseph Gordon-Levitt
) who arrives with his junkie nurse Precious (Mo'Nique). But Dr. Don is also the private doctor to Clayton, and when he recognizes Vicki, he is hesitant at first but helps. Now Dr. Don and Precious must keep Vicki and her infant son's existence a secret from Clayton. Rose switches to the role of midwife, and over Mikey's objections, insists that they take Vicki and her infant son to a safe place. The four end up in Philadelphia, where Mikey continues to struggle with the dual responsibilities of being an assassin for hire, and surrogate father figure.
Neisha arrives at Clayton's mansion demanding to know where Vicki is. Clayton heads out to the driveway to tell Neisha that Vicki left him. Clayton's bodyguard shows up at the gate and Clayton invites Neisha in for a drink. Neisha refuses, realizes that Clayton must have had Vicki killed, and fearing for her own life she leaves. Clayton becomes nervous that Neisha knew too much and may inform the police. Mikey gets his next contract kill, and it turned out to be Neisha. Mikey carries out the contract by poisoning Neisha with a laced drink, and she dies after ingesting enough. On his way out, Mikey sees a picture of Neisha and Vicki taken together. Mikey displays a tiny bit of guilt, but never tells Vicki about Neisha. Mikey and Rose move Vicki and her son to a house in upstate Pennsylvania. Rose continues helping Vicki with her baby, while Mikey carries on with the contract killings solo.
Clayton appears in a full-frontal nude scene
in which he is engaged in sex when distracted by voices in the next room. The unclothed Clayton opens the door to the room and shoots an unnamed women and her associate who are owed money. He even shoots his bodyguard in the foot. He calls Dr. Don to examine his bodyguard's foot. While Don nervously wonders if Clayton already knows about Vicki still being alive.
At the baby's first birthday party, Rose decides that she would rather die at her happiest point than suffer. She has Mikey take her to nearby woods, convinces him to have sex with her, and shoot her as she reaches orgasm
. Before she dies, Rose makes Mikey promise to take care of Vicki and her baby, and do whatever Vicki asks of him. Mikey, Vicki and the child, Anthony, live safely when the boy turns around age seven.
While searching for medical files, Precious hears a woman moaning in Dr. Don's office. She heads to the doctor's office, where she opens the door and finds Dr. Don giving oral sex to a woman he was examining. Betrayed by Dr. Don, Precious tells Don that he was going to be sorry and leaves his office. Meanwhile, Anthony witnesses Mikey assembling a gun for another contract kill. Vicki catches Anthony eavesdropping on Mikey and pulls him away from Mikey's bedroom before closing the door. She later confronts Mikey and tells him that he doesn't have to protect her and Anthony anymore and asks him to leave. Mikey goes out on another contract killing, dressed as a transvestite, and kills a man. After he carries out the contract, Mikey notices a birthday card the man had made for his son's sixth birthday, causing him to be consumed with guilt. Mikey realizes that he has grown attach to Anthony and after confessing to Vicki who he killed tells her he wants to stay.
Clayton finds out from Precious that his wife and child are alive. Clayton then shoots and kills Precious right before Dr. Don's eyes and shoots Don in the leg. Mikey, deciding that he no longer wants to kill anymore, decided that his next contract kill would be his final. When Mikey checks into a hotel he opens the file envelope on his contract, only to find a picture of him and Vicki leaving their house. Mikey then calls Vicki to find out if she and Anthony were okay. Clayton's bodyguard instead answers the phone, causing Mikey to rush home and right into Clayton's trap. After being captured and tortured (Clayton cuts off the tip on one of Mikey's fingers), Mikey fights back and defeats Clayton's goons. Clayton overpowers Mikey and is about to kill him when he is shot by his own son. Mikey tells Vicki and Anthony to wait outside, and Mikey kills all of
Clayton's men. Mikey then looks at Clayton, asks him if he was proud of Anthony, and shoots him.
Mikey, Vicki, and Anthony drive off down the road. Anthony ask Mikey if he is his son, Mikey replies that he is. Mikey also cautions Anthony to watch out for people like Clayton and his men; the boy responds, "We'll kill 'em, right dad?"
film Judgment Night
.
2005 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2005...
thriller directed by Lee Daniels
Lee Daniels
Lee Louis Daniels is an American actor, film producer, and director. He produced Monster's Ball and directed the film Precious, which received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Director; the film won two of the awards.-Early years:Daniels was born on Christmas Eve, 1959, in...
that stars Academy Award winners Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Cuba M. Gooding, Jr. is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of Rod Tidwell in Cameron Crowe's 1996 film Jerry Maguire, and his critically acclaimed performance as Tré Styles in John Singleton's 1991 film Boyz n the Hood.-Early life:Gooding was born...
, Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...
, and Mo'Nique. It opened in limited release in six cities: New York
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Baltimore, Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
, and Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
.
Plot
Mikey (Gooding Jr.) and his stepmother Rose (Mirren) are loversIncest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
and contract killers.
Rose is diagnosed with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
, as she and Mikey continue with their contract killings. Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
kingpin Clayton (Stephen Dorff
Stephen Dorff
Stephen Dorff is an American actor, best known for portraying Stuart Sutcliffe in Backbeat, Johnny Marco in Somewhere, and for his roles in Blade and Cecil B. DeMented.-Early life:...
) learns that his pregnant wife Vicki (Vanessa Ferlito
Vanessa Ferlito
-Personal life:An Italian American, Ferlito was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her father died when she was three. Her mother and stepfather own a hair salon in Brooklyn...
) may have had sex with someone else. So Clayton hires Mikey and Rose through an associate to kill her and several of his mob associates who he sees as weak men. Rose and Mikey set out to Clayton's mansion to kill Vicki, after Clayton convinces her he must leave town for two days to work. First, Rose quietly shoots and kills one of Vicki's bodyguards, while hiding in the back seat of his car, when he was sent on a food run. They head to Clayton's mansion to kill Vicki and her bodyguards. Upon entering, Mikey shoots and kills all of the guards while Rose heads for Vicki's bedroom. All the while, Vicki is on the phone with her best friend Neisha, (Macy Gray
Macy Gray
Macy Gray is a Grammy Award-winning American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress, famed for her distinctive raspy voice, and a singing style heavily influenced by Billie Holiday and Betty Davis.Gray has released five studio albums, with her fifth studio album, The Sellout,...
)
and is unaware of her bodyguards being killed. Rose enters Vicki's bedroom, but just as Rose is about to carry out the contract on Vicki, her water breaks and she goes into labor
Childbirth
Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
. Rose helps Vicki deliver her baby, which turned out to be a boy. Afterwards, Mikey and Rose drive Vicki and her infant son to a local motel. Mikey, at Rose's request, calls Dr. Don (Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....
) who arrives with his junkie nurse Precious (Mo'Nique). But Dr. Don is also the private doctor to Clayton, and when he recognizes Vicki, he is hesitant at first but helps. Now Dr. Don and Precious must keep Vicki and her infant son's existence a secret from Clayton. Rose switches to the role of midwife, and over Mikey's objections, insists that they take Vicki and her infant son to a safe place. The four end up in Philadelphia, where Mikey continues to struggle with the dual responsibilities of being an assassin for hire, and surrogate father figure.
Neisha arrives at Clayton's mansion demanding to know where Vicki is. Clayton heads out to the driveway to tell Neisha that Vicki left him. Clayton's bodyguard shows up at the gate and Clayton invites Neisha in for a drink. Neisha refuses, realizes that Clayton must have had Vicki killed, and fearing for her own life she leaves. Clayton becomes nervous that Neisha knew too much and may inform the police. Mikey gets his next contract kill, and it turned out to be Neisha. Mikey carries out the contract by poisoning Neisha with a laced drink, and she dies after ingesting enough. On his way out, Mikey sees a picture of Neisha and Vicki taken together. Mikey displays a tiny bit of guilt, but never tells Vicki about Neisha. Mikey and Rose move Vicki and her son to a house in upstate Pennsylvania. Rose continues helping Vicki with her baby, while Mikey carries on with the contract killings solo.
Clayton appears in a full-frontal nude scene
Nudity in film
Nudity in film is any presentation in motion pictures of people while naked or wearing less clothing than contemporary norms consider modest. Many actors and actresses have appeared nude, or exposing parts of their bodies or dressed in ways considered provocative by contemporary standards at some...
in which he is engaged in sex when distracted by voices in the next room. The unclothed Clayton opens the door to the room and shoots an unnamed women and her associate who are owed money. He even shoots his bodyguard in the foot. He calls Dr. Don to examine his bodyguard's foot. While Don nervously wonders if Clayton already knows about Vicki still being alive.
At the baby's first birthday party, Rose decides that she would rather die at her happiest point than suffer. She has Mikey take her to nearby woods, convinces him to have sex with her, and shoot her as she reaches orgasm
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
. Before she dies, Rose makes Mikey promise to take care of Vicki and her baby, and do whatever Vicki asks of him. Mikey, Vicki and the child, Anthony, live safely when the boy turns around age seven.
While searching for medical files, Precious hears a woman moaning in Dr. Don's office. She heads to the doctor's office, where she opens the door and finds Dr. Don giving oral sex to a woman he was examining. Betrayed by Dr. Don, Precious tells Don that he was going to be sorry and leaves his office. Meanwhile, Anthony witnesses Mikey assembling a gun for another contract kill. Vicki catches Anthony eavesdropping on Mikey and pulls him away from Mikey's bedroom before closing the door. She later confronts Mikey and tells him that he doesn't have to protect her and Anthony anymore and asks him to leave. Mikey goes out on another contract killing, dressed as a transvestite, and kills a man. After he carries out the contract, Mikey notices a birthday card the man had made for his son's sixth birthday, causing him to be consumed with guilt. Mikey realizes that he has grown attach to Anthony and after confessing to Vicki who he killed tells her he wants to stay.
Clayton finds out from Precious that his wife and child are alive. Clayton then shoots and kills Precious right before Dr. Don's eyes and shoots Don in the leg. Mikey, deciding that he no longer wants to kill anymore, decided that his next contract kill would be his final. When Mikey checks into a hotel he opens the file envelope on his contract, only to find a picture of him and Vicki leaving their house. Mikey then calls Vicki to find out if she and Anthony were okay. Clayton's bodyguard instead answers the phone, causing Mikey to rush home and right into Clayton's trap. After being captured and tortured (Clayton cuts off the tip on one of Mikey's fingers), Mikey fights back and defeats Clayton's goons. Clayton overpowers Mikey and is about to kill him when he is shot by his own son. Mikey tells Vicki and Anthony to wait outside, and Mikey kills all of
Clayton's men. Mikey then looks at Clayton, asks him if he was proud of Anthony, and shoots him.
Mikey, Vicki, and Anthony drive off down the road. Anthony ask Mikey if he is his son, Mikey replies that he is. Mikey also cautions Anthony to watch out for people like Clayton and his men; the boy responds, "We'll kill 'em, right dad?"
Note
This film marks the second time Gooding Jr. and Dorff worked together. Their first was the 1993film Judgment Night
Judgment Night (film)
Judgment Night is a 1993 action thriller film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Emilio Estévez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven and Stephen Dorff as a group of friends on the run from a group of drug dealers after they witness a murder...
.
Cast
- Cuba Gooding, Jr.Cuba Gooding, Jr.Cuba M. Gooding, Jr. is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of Rod Tidwell in Cameron Crowe's 1996 film Jerry Maguire, and his critically acclaimed performance as Tré Styles in John Singleton's 1991 film Boyz n the Hood.-Early life:Gooding was born...
— Mikey - Helen MirrenHelen MirrenDame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...
— Rose - Vanessa FerlitoVanessa Ferlito-Personal life:An Italian American, Ferlito was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her father died when she was three. Her mother and stepfather own a hair salon in Brooklyn...
— Vicki - Stephen DorffStephen DorffStephen Dorff is an American actor, best known for portraying Stuart Sutcliffe in Backbeat, Johnny Marco in Somewhere, and for his roles in Blade and Cecil B. DeMented.-Early life:...
— Clayton Mayfield - Macy GrayMacy GrayMacy Gray is a Grammy Award-winning American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress, famed for her distinctive raspy voice, and a singing style heavily influenced by Billie Holiday and Betty Davis.Gray has released five studio albums, with her fifth studio album, The Sellout,...
— Neisha - Joseph Gordon-LevittJoseph Gordon-LevittJoseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....
— Dr. Don - Mo'Nique — Precious