The Fighter (**½)
Directed by: David O. Russell
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Jack
McGee, Mickey O'Keefe, Frank Renzulli
Seen: February 27th 2011
**½
Out of ****
The Fighter is a true story about two boxers from a working class
family in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1993. This working class family also sport
the worst collection of late-80’s/early-90’s fashion and hairstyles you’re
likely to ever see on screen from the boxers’ seven (yes, 7) sisters and
mother, Alice Ward (Leo) (the audience in my screening laughed out loud at the
ridiculous stylings and sayings of these 7 sisters, at times even at moments
where no humour could have been intended). The two boxers are “Irish” Mickey
Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, and Dicky Ecklund, played with immense screen
presence by Christian Bale. Dicky is a has-been, now addicted to crack and
still riding the wave of knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard in a fight broadcast
on HBO years ago. Mickey is a struggling boxer who is almost exclusively used
by boxing promoters as a stepping stone for other boxers towards greatness. In
one fight near the start of the movie Mickey is mismatched against a boxer 20
pounds heavier than him because his manager-mother and trainer-brother are too
greedy to let the fight simply pass them by while Mickey doesn’t really stand
strong for himself either.
Mickey is in love with Charlene (Adams), local bar girl and college
drop-out, and they start dating. She convinces him to try again after recovering
from a broken hand sustained during his brother’s arrest; but not before getting
a new manager and trainer, much to Mickey’s family’s disappointment, but to Mickey’s
intrinsic betterment. He starts training and starts getting better fights set
up by his new manager, Sal LoNano (Renzulli). His ‘new management-trainer’ is Mickey
O’Keefe (who plays himself), the man that usually stands in as trainer whenever
Mickey’s crack-head brother Dicky doesn’t show up for exercise sessions, which
happens a lot. As he progresses he is soon headed for a title bout, coming
about just as Dicky is released from prison and he tries to assume his duties
as Mickey’s trainer. O’Keefe and Charlene and Mickey and Dicky and Alice Ward
collide right before Mickey’s title challenge, and this causes for some drama
involving everyone close to Mickey, asking for a mass-change of heart to allow
for Mickey to continue.
Wahlberg and Bale are great as the quarrelling brothers dealing with
an uncomfortable tension, and Christian Bale delivers a brilliant performance
as the unstable and dangerous older brother. Amy Adams is beautiful as ever and
she disappears into Charlene, leaving no traces of herself from earlier roles
such as the Princess in Enchanted or Julie in Julie & Julia. Melissa Leo
manages an impossible task in creating a contrasting character who you love to
hate, but who you also end up rooting for, a mafia matriarch of sorts; while
Jack McGee silently but effectively plays her husband George, who struggles to
get a word in at the best of times, with the words he does get in being wise
ones.
David O. Russell has made a decent movie with The Fighter, but I felt
it becoming just too sentimental and almost mechanically emotional at times. The
acting is brilliant, but the story is just too familiar, following the broken
and beaten sportsman towards an unlikely triumph, and me not being a big fan of
boxing doesn’t help the movie’s cause either. The Fighter was all right, but I can’t
really say that I’m a fan, it all just feels too recycled.
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