MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Diggstown’ Bets on Powerhouse Actors

James Woods, Louis Gossett Jr. and Bruce Dern are the kind of actors who can get a movie jumping around them, even when everything else in it seems flaccid or ordinary. Their respective screen personas--Woods’ live-wire gall, Gossett’s burning equanimity, Dern’s edgy intensity--can galvanize even weak scripts.

In the new boxing / gambling/con-game comedy “Diggstown” (citywide), this trio, plus Oliver Platt as a preppie-looking cardsharp, liven up what could have been an overly cute entertainment: an adaptation of Leonard Wise’s novel “The Diggstown Ringers” that cuts too many corners, skips from scene to scene, and leaves curious holes and loose ends lying all around, like a half-constructed road.

“Diggstown” isn’t a by-the-numbers studio movie. It has some sharp dialogue and offbeat characters, probably a reflection of its literary source. But it’s also one of those movies in which there are too many big scenes--murders, shakedowns, brutal prison fights--and in which everything leads single-mindedly to the biggest “big” scene of all: in this case, a 24-hour-long boxing match with super-fighter Gossett battling 10 opponents, while buddy Woods and Diggstown czar Dern bet bundles for and against him.

The movie is about all the maneuvers surrounding the match: the hustles that set it up, the dirty money behind it and the nasty surprises Woods’ Gabriel Caine and Dern’s John Gillon keep springing on each other--while Gossett does his stuff as “Honey” Roy Palmer, a deadly knockout genius who can disassemble a man with one punch.

Some of these are maneuvers we know from other con-game or fight movies. But “Diggstown” isn’t even dealing with the moderate corruptions of pro boxing. We’re in a twilight world where Gillon has killed two men and crippled two others before the final round, and where, to face “Honey” Roy, he keeps dragging in ringer after ringer, monster after monster.

The excitement of the big fight is the movie’s raison d’etre. It’s an intricately choreographed set-piece, surrounded with screaming fans and mind-boggling skulduggery, adrenaline-charging slugfests, outrageous swindles and last-minute twists. But the real heart of “Diggstown” isn’t the fight. It’s that lead threesome and their interplay: the way Gossett battles the world and Woods and Dern battle each other. Gossett is the only non-crook of the three: a hustler with integrity, overpowering presence and blazing eyes. Dern, always a great movie heavy, plays Gillon with such affable over-confidence, squeezing out his voice airily and cheerfully under the mean, arrogant squint of his eyes, that he succeeds in generating true audience hatred. Gillon is the sort of villain Kirk Douglas used to play in the immediate postwar era: corrupt, slick, unashamedly sadistic, supremely self-confident. Against this genial vileness, Woods, who has also specialized in villains, seems to have the right tools: nasty panache, needling insolence and quick, chameleonic con.

Michael Ritchie is an erratic filmmaker, but he’s usually at his best with material like this: ironic studies of American sports or competitions, such as “The Bad News Bears,” “Downhill Racer,” “Smile” or “Semi-Tough.” Obviously, he enjoyed doing “Diggstown” (rated R for language) and many audiences will probably enjoy watching it--though they might wonder why time is so weirdly telescoped in some early sections, why the murders are so downplayed, why half the fight’s bettors don’t revolt by the end, or where ingenue Emily Forrester (Heather Graham) disappears to. Overall, it’s a dubious battle, but no one can say Ritchie didn’t bring his own ringers along: those movie-savers Gossett, Woods and Dern, three crackerjacks of acting and con-artistry.

‘Diggstown’

James Woods: Gabriel Caine

Louis Gossett Jr.: “Honey” Roy Palmer

Bruce Dern: John Gillon

Oliver Platt; Fitz

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presentation of a Schaffel/Eclectic Films production. Director Michael Ritchie. Producer Robert Schaffel. Screenplay Steven McKay. Cinematographer Gerry Fisher. Editor Don Zimmerman. Costumes Wayne A. Finkelman. Music James Newton Howard. Production design Steve Hendrickson. Art director Okowita. Set designers Gregory Van Horne, Michael Devine. Set decorator Barbara Drake. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language).