In describing how he came up with the idea for his new film Day of the Fight, actor-turned-director Jack Huston (Ben Hur, Kill Your Darlings, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) told the opening night crowd at the Mill Valley Film Festival that it was the film’s star, Michael Pitt — with whom he worked on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire — who gave him the inspiration to write and direct the story of a washed up boxer preparing for a big comeback fight by confronting his many demons over the course of one very full morning, afternoon and evening.

“I’d watch Michael pump himself up between takes by punching sandbags,” Huston revealed during a post-film interview on stage at the Christopher B. Smith Film Center. “He was so intense. HE’d just go for it. And I’d think, ‘Wow! That guy is born to play a boxer.'”

Huston, the nephew of Angelica Huston and the grandson of the legendary director John Huston, carried the idea around in his head, gradually developing the story, the characters, the powerful climax. When he had the opportunity, he’d producers about the film project long before he’s actually sat down to write the script, which he finally did during the pandemic shutdowns.

Jumping ahead, Huston has now completed the film, which does indeed star Pitt, as the convicted felon and former boxing champion known as Irish Mike, whose boxing career ended with a devastating drunken car crash for which he was responsible. Now out of prison, desperate to make amends to those he’s hurt, abandoned or betrayed, Mike finds himself wandering New York City, having a series of minor to major conversations with friends, relatives, loan sharks, waitresses, his ex-girlfriend and more, all leading up to a big undercard fight at Madison Square Garden, his last chance at living his dream and perhaps finding a measure of redemption.

The film is shot almost entirely in black-and-white by cinematographer Peter Simonite and features performances by the likes of Steve Buscemi, Ron Perlman, Nicolette Robinson and Joe Pesci.

Essentially a series of vignettes set in dockside offices, diners, churches, gyms and apartments — and, of course, the ever photogenic streets of New York City — the story of Day of the Fight is driven primarily through conversations. Irish Mike has a lot he needs to say before he steps back into the ring that evening, and viewers are likely to come away with at least one or two favorites among these face-to-face acting exhibitions. I liked Mike’s short chat on the street with a homeless fan who casually bums a smoke, the lovely undertone-rich exchange between a diner waitress and Mike as she tries to buy him breakfast on his big day, the philosophy-infused Raymond Carver-esque back-and-forth with a friend turned priest, and a heart-breaking non-exchange between Mike and his dementia-silenced father (Pesci), as the wounds, sins and regrets of their past are named and put to rest in one of the films most unforgettable scenes.

It all leads to the big fight at Madison Square Garden, where Mike’s tough-love trainer and manager Stevie (Ron Perlman) waits to coax, cajole, cheer and stage manage his fighter through a challanging match almost no one expects much from — but on which literally everything is riding for Mike. For a moment there, I thought maybe the film was going to end before our underdog actually steps into the ring, since by then the story had carried enough confrontational emotion to fill a trio of more traditional boxing films. But there is a fight after all, one that manages to hit most of the expected prize-fight marks (some might call them chiches) one would expect, while putting a unique spin on a few of them. Best of all, the fight sequence gives us, with the heart-felt performance of the mighty Perlman, what might be the big screen’s most loving and brotherly ringside training scenes ever. Instead of barking commands and shouting expletives as many fictional trainers do in such cinematic moments, Perlman’s Stevie almost purrs his instructions to Mike, leaning in to whisper encouragements we only catch fragments of, as when a brutal, middle-of-the-fight round ends and Stevie leans in to growl, “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Whether intentional or not, the shimmering, shadowy B&W photography adds to the film’s slightly unnatural, reality-heightened quality, allowing viewers to take Day of the Fight as a feature-length “lost episode” of The Twilight Zone. Though there are no real supernatural elements to the plot, there is a somewhat eerie quality to it all, underscored by the brief memory-drenched images that flash and flicker across the screen, and through Mike’s mind, with the silent insistence of a waking dream. And as the film winds itself into a looping conclusion, Mike’s long day ending more-or-less as it begins, the enormity of what we’ve witnessed finally comes into view.

Impossible to imagine without the central performance of Pitt — who gives us a character with bruises on his soul so clear they hurt to watch and a sad, hard-won sweetness that seems to have been forged in a furnace of shame and regret — Huston’s low-key passion project will probably appeal mostly to art-house cineastes and boxing movie completists. But for those lucky enough to catch it, Day of the Fight is a film you may not soon forget, and could subtly alter the way you see boxing films in the future.