Warrior

“Warrior” is an ugly, jittery, annoying and contrived film that never relents in beating you.

The Fighter” isn’t exactly “Raging Bull,” but it’s a better film than most give it credit for. To call “Warrior” just a Mixed Martial Arts “Fighter” set in Philly however is giving “Warrior” way too much credit.

Watching “Warrior” I realized all the things “The Fighter” actually does not do. It has no split screen montages, no wives telling their husbands fighting is the wrong life for a family man, no shaky cam fight scenes, no unbeatable foreign behemoth, no money problems, no dark pasts conjured out of thin air, no legal issues, no dead mother, no washed up father lamenting his glory days, no fake SportsCenter clips and most of all, no parables.

“Warrior” has all of these things, and yet lacks a minute of the fun in watching Micky Ward’s train wreck of a brother, his posse full of trashy sisters, his tart and sexy girlfriend or his commanding and memorable mother. Continue reading “Warrior”

The Fighter

David O. Russell takes the boxing movie and makes it into a rich family dramedy.

I wasn’t looking at Mark Wahlberg when he was training in the boxing ring. I wasn’t watching his gloves either, moving swiftly and smoothly from blow to blow. I was watching Christian Bale playing Wahlberg’s coked out brother as he’s training in the ring along with him. In “The Fighter,” he’s not just bobbing and weaving to block the punches.

Bale portrays Dicky Eklund, the brother of Wahlberg’s Micky Ward. Ward is the fighter, training to win a title, looking for romance and struggling with his own sense of self. Dicky already had his chance. 14 years ago, he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and became the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. Now it’s 1993, and he’s addicted to crack, but still he’s the life of the party. Continue reading “The Fighter”