Review: The Fighter

The Fighter, a fact-based boxing drama, is enormously entertaining, stacked full of great performances and moments of directorial chutzpah.

It tells the story of on-off boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). 15 years after knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard (or did he slip?) in the late 70s, Dicky is still the pride of his town, but long-retired from boxing and clearly not the full ticket.

His only way to connect with boxing (and reality) is to be trainer and corner-man for his brother, who’s on a loosing streak. Indeed Micky is surrounded by his massively dysfunctional family: his coven of braying sisters, and Melissa Leo as his domineering mother, who sees Micky purely as a vehicle to keep Dicky close to boxing.

Micky’s conundrum is this: is he better off without his family? It helps if you don’t know the Micky Ward story, because you won’t know what’s coming next; if you do know the Micky Ward story, you might still be surprised by as the film takes a few liberties with the facts for the sake of the drama.

It would be easy, but entirely wrong to compare The Fighter with Rocky: the former has a lot more going on. Director David O Russell lends the film some Scorsese-esque touches, and rather like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, Mark Wahlberg takes the brave decision of being the ordinary guy at the centre around which the drama and the more camera-hugging characters swirl. Russell plays out the irony that Ward comes across as a relatively unaggressive, almost docile fighter in the ring perhaps because there was so much conflict in his life outside of the ring.

Bale’s performance as the demented Dicky is reminiscent of Nic Cage, and early on, it’s just too much, but by the end, you come to realise that he has succeeded in capturing Dicky’s real-life mania. Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that he deserves all the awards he’s won so far for it.

Melissa Leo, so brilliant in Frozen River a few years ago, almost beats Barbara Hershey in Black Swan for the title of scariest mother: she’s pure trailer trash, emboldened and prejudices reinforced by having made some money down the years.

Succeeding against type is the lovely Amy Adams as Micky’s girlfriend. Known for playing fairly naïve characters, here she’s dressed down, playing something of a failure, who throws a few good punches herself, verbal and physical, in the numerous confrontations between her and Micky’s mother and sisters. The moment when she realises that her management of Micky’s career is no different to his mother’s is as painful a moment in the film.

Ah, yes, the pain: this is a boxing drama, so there must be some boxing scenes, and there are plenty. Russell mostly shoots them as we would see them on TV, but the camera closes in as the stakes get higher. Throughout Russell maintains a realistic, almost downbeat bent, helping to ground the film and the characters in a story that might otherwise appear as pure Hollywood rags to riches, against the odds nonsense.

I found myself unexpectedly caught up in the final fight and its epic conclusion, and the closing bookend (the film ends as it began) returns the film to an even keel with a subtle punch of its own, with the two brothers together, their fractious fraternal relationship and all its wounds seemingly healed, both having escaped Dicky’s shadow that had haunted them both for so long.
Score: 8/10