Movie Review: 'The Fighter'

When I started hearing the non-stop hype surrounding THE FIGHTER, I was honestly a little annoyed. What says “Oscar bait” more than an inspirational boxing movie that’s based on a true story? Do we really need another one of these? The list of acclaimed boxing movies is endless: RAGING BULL, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, ALI, CINDERELLA MAN, ROCKY, and so on and so forth. Nonetheless, despite my prejudices, I must admit that THE FIGHTER is a fantastic addition into the genre. The film is about the early years of real life fighter Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), and his brother and trainer Dicky (Christian Bale), who helped lead him to a title win. While I am getting tired of seeing another one of these movies come out every single year, I’m starting to understand the fascination they bring out in people. To have a dream like this, and to go after it with such fervor, is no easy feat. It’s painful. It’s humiliating. And you need to have your wits about you to be able to knock down someone bigger than you–or as we saw in one of the movie’s best scenes, someone who has 20 pounds on you.

Wahlberg plays Micky sincerely and with the amount of heart necessary for someone with his resilience. What takes the film from good to great though, is Christian Bale’s phenomenal performance. I read somewhere that people who came across Bale while filming mistook him for the real Dicky. Now I don’t know anything about what the real guy was like, but Bale plays the character so specifically, with such a particular way of walking and speaking, that I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true. With his many layers, this is no easy character to play; Dicky wants so badly to have a second shot at glory and to be there for his family, but drugs and crime get in the way, leading to him having a stint in prison. A lot of the film (and at times maybe more than I would have preferred) focuses on the family dynamic, but not just the one between Micky and Dicky; it extends even further, bringing their mother (Melissa Leo) and many sisters into the mix as well. I felt like I totally knew all these people. I understood their jealously (much of it directed towards Micky’s bartender girlfriend Charlene, a wonderfully unexpected performance from Amy Adams) and dependence on Micky’s boxing career, even though they were far from likable. The fighting scenes were spectacular, and at times, I wished there was more fighting than family drama, because those scenes were just that good. And this is coming from someone who actually dislikes boxing.

Rating: B+