Diggstown (aka Midnight Sting)

Directed by: Michael Ritchie

Starring: James Woods, Bruce Dern, Lou Gossett Jr, Oliver Platt, Heather Graham

Midnight Sting, aka Diggstown, is what you get when you cross the Machiavellian machinations of The Sting with a sweaty, adrenaline fuelled , against-all-odds boxing tournament.

The small town of Diggstown is a community steeped in the sport of boxing. It even had it’s own local boxing legend, heavyweight champion Charles Macum Diggs. Everything came crashing down one fateful night when Diggs was knocked out by his opponent, causing him severe brain damage. Meanwhile, the townsfolk lost all their savings having bet heavily on Diggs winning as usual. The only person to come out of that fight smelling of roses was Digg’s manager, John Gillon (Dern), who’s now the mayor of Diggstown.

Enter one Gabriel Kane, conman extraordinaire, and his partners Fitz (the excellent Oliver Platt) and Honey Roy Palmer (Gossett Jr). The trio are heading to Diggstown to conduct the biggest con of their careers and empty the coffers of Gillon.

When we first meet Kane, he’s actually in prison, coming to the end of a short prison term for forgery. He’s been making money by setting up fights between inmates and helping rich prisoners to escape. Thanks to his friendship with cell-mate Wolf Forrester (Randall “Tex” Cobb), Gabriel learns the whole sordid history of Diggstown and begins to hatch a plan.

The set-up, where Gabriel and Fitz bait Gillon, is excellent. On one side of town in a bar, Fitz has got involved in some heavy drinking and heavy gambling with some young rednecks that include Gillon’s son, Robby. When Robby loses the vintage sports car his dad has just given to him as a gift, someone goes running to tell his dad. Meanwhile, Gillon Sr, has been introduced to Gabriel Kane. Gabriel has breezed into town with the same car as Gillon (a white Mercedes convertible), but a more expensive model. Sitting in the town’s boxing arena, eating popcorn, he’s accosted by the local sheriff, Stennis, whose deep into Gillon’s pockets, as is the local bank manager. The sheriff and Gillon’s other hangers on try to emit an air of Southern State menace, as if they were antagonists from In The Heat of the Night, or Cool Hand Luke. What makes it funny is that Gabriel is completely unimpressed by their attempts to be intimidating. After a bit of playful banter between Gabriel and Gillon, in which Gabriel baits him about the quality of the fight they are watching, Gillon gives a demonstration of the power he pulls in the town. Having made a $1000 wager on which fighter is going to win, Gillon stands, whistles to the fighters, and tells the one Gabriel’s bet on to take a dive.

When Gillon arrives at the bar, Gabriel tagging along to see what the fuss is about, Fitz is facing a hostile crowd of rednecks who aren’t too impressed with him bad-mouthing the town hero, Charles Macum Diggs. When asked who he considers better, Fitz mentions Honey Roy Palmer, and proceeds to wager that Palmer could take on ten men in the period of one day and beat them all. Gillon is able to steer the situation so it looks like Fitz is having to welsh on his bet, but Gabriel comes to his rescue by saying that he’ll back Fitz. A deal is made to iron out the details of the fight and to set a date.

In any other town, that would be it. Their “fish” would be hooked and the match itself almost a formality before clearing out with a tonne of the town’s cash. But Gillon is different. He’s as much a con-man as Gabriel Kane, and has been doing it a lot longer. Gillon knows he’s being baited. You can tell in the playful way he speaks to Kane as they set up the bet. But Gillon is up for a challenge, thinking he can outsmart the younger con-artist.

What separates Gillon and Kane is how ruthless they are prepared to be to get what they want. Gillon is heartless, whereas under Kane’s hard-bitten exterior beats a tiny nugget of gold. Gillon sacrificed his fighter, his fatted calf, for a big payout, while Kane threw in the towel during Palmer’s last bout because his friend was being badly beaten.

While he was still in prison, Kane was asked by Wolf to check on his dogs, whom he dotes over. Reluctantly, Kane does as he’s asked, even taking Wolf’s shirt so they can bask in his scent. This inadvertently brings him into contact with Wolf’s younger – and much brighter – sister, Emily, played by Heather Graham. Graham succinctly illustrates the transparency of Kane’s con – which reinforces the idea that Gillon must know that he’s being set up, but wants to play anyway. The original plan was for Wolf to sweet-talk his sister into providing details of Gillon’s financial assets (she works at the local bank), but this doesn’t go to plan so it’s left to Kane to fill in the blanks and convince her to trust him.

Kane keeps his cards very close to his chest, even keeping information from his partners. The reasons behind the scam are almost as important as the scam itself. Kane is out for a big payday but he’s also doing this to put right a big injustice – to Diggs, Wolf and the town as a whole. By the time we get to the fight, the audience is finally up to speed on all the details – why Wolf was in prison, why Diggs lost his last fight and how Gillon came out on top.

Over a period of 24 hours, Palmer must defeat ten fighters from Diggstown. Kane and Fitz are confident that he can defeat most of them no problem, but nevertheless spread a little bribe money with two fighters and pull a “brown bottle” (laxative in his water bottle) on another, just to make sure.

Gillon’s biggest flaw is that he firmly believes he has the whole town at his disposal. Blatantly telling a boxer to take a dive in the middle of a match is an example of that. When he discovers that Ham and Slim Busby have been bribed to throw their matches (thanks to Slim’s dreadful performance in the ring), Gillon is all fury, storming out of the ring to find the bribe money and confront Ham, giving him a deadly ultimatum.

As the con continues, the stakes are continually raised higher and higher, and the fights start to take their toll on Palmer. Both Gillon and Kane have stacked the deck and both still have big cards up their sleeves. The ending might be an inevitability but the script manages to keep pulling the rug from under us until the final move.

The script, by Stephen McKay, based on the novel The Diggstown Ringers by Leonard Wise, is full of superb exchanges, such as the scene where Kane, Gillon and their partners work on agreeing the exact parameters of the wager, or where Gillon tells his fighters his strategy.

The acting across the board is just excellent. James Woods gives a manic yet assured performance. Oliver Platt, whom I first took note of in Flatliners, is wonderful as Fitz and Lou Gossett Jr is a great foil for Woods, and the two have a great antagonistic relationship throughout the film. Bruce Dern has long been an excellent character actor but this is my favourite performance – comical, devious and deadly.

Director Michael Ritchie was in the twilight of his career by the time he directed Diggstown , but he hadn’t lost any of the skill he’d brought previously to such films as The Candidate and Fletch. It’s an elegant genre piece, devoid of the sort of ADD editing which would be applied to such a film today.

Verdict

Diggstown is very much ahead of it’s time and of it’s time (just check out James Woods’ shirt and tie combos), an excellent mix of con-games and adrenaline thrills, plus four class actors gorging on choice dialogue.

9 out of 10 (MikeOutwest)

New! Comments