The Fighter
Cinema Nova, 14/02/2011
Movie #11 for 2011
Although I despise boxing and usually scoff at sports movies (even as I’m handing over cash money for admission), I’m always drawn to boxing movies. I think this is for two reasons:
1. You just know it’s going to be a triumph-of-the-working-class-underdog kind of story. And who doesn’t love one of those?
2. Boxers, like dancers, have a certain kind of physicality - they seem to be all muscle and no fat. Particularly welter weights, like “Irish” Micky Ward, played by MARK WAHLBERG. It brings out the voyeur in me.
For those who know (or care) about boxing, Micky was kind of a big deal in American boxing in the 80s. This film focuses on his origin story and the bumpy ride to getting famous. There’s some hero-worshipping going on, but also a genuinely interesting (and genuinely screwed up) family.
Micky’s family includes his seven sisters; his crack-addicted former-contender trainer brother Dicky (CHRISTIAN BALE); and his ultra-Catholic guilt-tripping manager mother (MELLISA LEO, “Treme”, Frozen River). It’s hard to make fairly awful people sympathetic in a film and I’m not sure the writers and director DAVID O. RUSSELL (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees) succeed convincingly here - the mother’s emotional manipulation or Dicky prostituting his girlfriend are (awkwardly, hollowly) played for laughs.
Leo and Bale deliver astoundingly good performances but Wahlberg is great too as the quieter, solid straight man to their over-the-top characters. AMY ADAMS also stars as Micky’s girlfriend and, it seems, one of the few people who is genuinely in his corner.
It’s a fairly sprawling, meandering film with plenty in it apparently for boxing fans than went right over my head, but there’s also a bit to like as well, including good performances, a nice underdog story and two very fine examples of exactly how fit actors are willing to get for a film.
