Starring Rossif Sutherland and Danny Glover. Rating not available.

Along with other battles it must survive to be seen, Poor Boy’s Game suffers from arriving just one week after All Hat, a Canadian film that offers almost the same plot in a more amiable package. And that story line isn’t exactly unfamiliar to begin with: guy gets out of prison and returns to working-class hometown in order to confront unfinished business with family and so-called friends. It hardly helps, commercially speaking, that Game plays it out with some effective variations.

One difference is that the tale is set in Nova Scotia, in a racially charged, working-class environment we rarely see in movies or on TV. Another is that there is a compelling (at least initially) lead performance from Rossif Sutherland (of ER, and another son of Donald) as Donnie, who spent 10 years up the river for beating a black kid almost to death. What we sense, but what isn’t known to his brutal, bigoted clan nor to the Afro-Canadian community calling for his blood, is that prison has actually mellowed the guy. It has also left him with only one marketable skill—boxing—even if he hasn’t learned it well enough to take on a local showboater (Flex Alexander) who wants to hand Donnie harsh payback while scoring some big bread, and cred, for himself.

Our soft-spoken hero needs help. It’s to the film’s credit that we actually believe that he could be trained by his victim’s father. It matters that this coach is played by Danny Glover, who is both unpredictable and introspective in a difficult role. I wish director Clément Virgo (Rude, Lie With Me) and his coscreenwriter, Chaz Thorne, had been as thoughtful while developing a story that hits the ropes in a laughably overwrought last act. As good as some fighters are, sometimes they just can’t go the distance.