Oscar De La Hoya rocketed to fame when, at 19 years old, he won Olympic gold in the lightweight boxing division. His fresh, smiling face was all over TV screens and magazine covers, and he quickly became known as “The Golden Boy”. In the new two-part MAX documentary The Golden Boy, we learn about the rough life and addiction struggles that lay underneath that golden smile.
The Gist: The Golden Boy follows a traditional structure for biographical sports documentaries. It’s structured around interviews–primarily with De La Hoya himself, but also with family members and contemporaries. This is fleshed out by archival footage and photographs–news clips, recordings of his early fights, and so on.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There’s no shortage of biographical athlete documentaries to choose from these days, but there’s also no denying that some stories are more compelling than others. De La Hoya’s story rides on the strength of his position as a Mexican-American cultural icon, and the depth of his struggles once in the spotlight. For recent comparisons, The Golden Boy has shades of Showtime’s Wilt Chamberlain documentary Goliath or their profile of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Stand.
Performance Worth Watching: The Golden Boy is largely autobiographical–Oscar De La Hoya is at the center of the documentary, telling his own story–but his monologuing is fleshed out by welcome context from people in his life–his father, his brother, and perhaps most endearingly, his childhood friend Eric Gomez, who offers the clearest picture of what it was like for them growing up.
Memorable Dialogue: “I’ve never told anybody about my life,” De La Hoya intones in a cold-open monologue to the documentary, seen close-up in black and white. “About my emotions, about the reality of what has happened in my life, how I feel. These are my true emotions, these are my feelings. There’s no fucking sugarcoating anything… I’m just tired of it, so I have to speak, I have to say it out loud to free myself. That’s the only way. That’s the only fucking way… because the last 45 years have been pretty dark.”
Sex and Skin: There’s certainly some mature subject material here, but nothing that would qualify as “sex and skin”.
Our Take: Even if you don’t follow boxing, there’s a very good chance that you’re familiar with Oscar De La Hoya. The baby-faced boxer became one of the most celebrated and marketable athletes of the 1990s, a smiling young man with model looks and a compelling backstory. He came from an immigrant family in East Los Angeles, and rocketed to fame after delivering on a promise he made to his dying mother when, at age 19, he won Olympic gold in boxing. Los Angeles celebrated him as a hero, his face soon graced magazine covers, and he was dubbed “The Golden Boy”.
What you might not be aware of is the darkness he harbors, the immense pain that — as the interviews that make up the backbone of The Golden Boy make clear — still haunts him to this day.
De La Hoya tells of his childhood in East Los Angeles, growing up poor and hungry, the child of working-class Mexican immigrants. Inspired by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics — and driven by the dreams of his father — De La Hoya set his sights on becoming an Olympic champion boxer. He tells of early-morning training runs through the darkened and dangerous streets of his neighborhood, on the lookout for gang members and sometimes chased by stray dogs. He tells of sharing his dream in front of his sixth grade class and receiving in return laughter from classmates and his teacher. He tells of immense pressure to deliver for his family as his talent and potential became clear.
Most of all, he was driven to succeed for his mother, Cecilia, who died of cancer when Oscar was still in high school, and whose dying request that he win Olympic gold became part of his legend when he delivered on it at the 1992 Barcelona games.
This rocket-ride to fame presented pitfalls — shady promoters, managers who made off with his money, trainers in over their heads, and someone looking to make a buck off the Golden Boy at every turn. This is the central drama of The Golden Boy, and it’s a compelling one — a story you could easily envision anchoring an Oscar-bait biopic. It works better as a documentary, though, and The Golden Boy is well-paced, well-structured and–perhaps most importantly–entertaining enough to keep your attention over the two-plus-hour runtime. This isn’t an athlete documentary padded out by unnecessary fodder–it’s the backstory behind a figure you’re probably familiar with, and probably don’t know a whole lot about, and it’s just the right length to tell it.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Oscar De La Hoya’s story is a compelling one, and one that many people familiar with the boxer still haven’t heard. The Golden Boy is a capable, well-crafted retelling of this story.
Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky who publishes the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.