The Fighter

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Cleverly by naming the film "The Fighter" you don't know which fighter the movie is supposed to be about. It could be about the troubles of Dickie Ecklund, the man who fought Sugar Ray Leonard and then had his life spiral out of control. Or it could be about fighter Mickey Ward, Dickie's half-brother who also fights. You could make a strong case for Dickie. Played by Christian Bale, he's the most compelling character in the film because he gets to play a stoned out of his mind crack head and all those resultant quirks. Bale did win the academy award for his role. Wahlberg for his part is mostly mono-syllabic for his part. He barely speaks. spends a lot of time on the periphery of scenes. Even in the ring, he's the guy getting punched for most of the fight.

It's also a big story about family dysfunction. The mom is hateable which is why she won the academy award for her portrayal. there were a lot of good portrayals in this film. Amie Adams who plays Wahlberg girlfriend, does a great job as Mickey's take no shit partner.

The story was very predictable. It's fight movie so what do you expect to happen at the end? It's about redemption so you can guess who gets redeemed. It was a fine film for a Sunday movie.

And I'm no Mo, but Wahlberg did look really good. He came off very convincingly as a fighter. That four years of training really paid off.

[Drunk Monk]

Great performances all around - that's what made this film engrossing. Otherwise, it's a white trash flick, which is funny in it's own way. However, it lost me in - of all things - the fights. Why is boxing fight choreography so lame? I was half checked out by Mickey's first win, and by the final title match, I was ready to hit fast forward. Glad I didn't because the end credits with the real people the story was based upon was good.

But still, great acting. Bale vanishes into the role, like usual. Good for one viewing. And yea, could have used a sword fight.

[cranefly]

I expected a good movie and it was better than I expected. The whole dysfunctional family angle was mesmerizing and cringe-worthy. I'm still puzzling over how the director got away with depicting so many living family members in such a negative light. It turns out that the mother was dying in the hospital during the promotional tours for the movie. She was not happy with how she had been portrayed. However, she privately conceded to family and friends that she had expected it to be a lot worse.

The fight scenes were mostly a disappointment. In the first fight, Wahlberg never throws a punch. Not a single one! And in many of the other fights, he throws only a few punches. Also, Wahlberg built up big biceps and pects for the part. But for boxing that can just slow you way down. The really great boxers, like Monzon, Duran, Sugar Ray, have smooth undefined chests. The wiry musculature for boxing is mostly hidden.

But having leveled these criticisms, let me back off on them -- after having watched footage of the real Micky Ward and reading portions of a book on him. He had big biceps and pects. This is probably what gave him his unique body-punching effectiveness (it certainly didn't make him fast). And fight commentators and the people in Micky's corner were frequently aghast at Micky's long quiet spells when he wouldn't punch at all. So maybe Wahlberg's physique and performance came closer to the real Micky Ward than I thought in those fight scenes.

I was also troubled by the suggestion that brother Dickie was the brains behind Micky, and without Dickie, Micky couldn't have accomplished anything. From my readings, even Dickie couldn't nudge Micky out of his punchless funks in many of his fights. It's a bit of a mystery what was going on in Micky's head. One possibility is that his hands were hurting too much for him to do much punching. He had smallish girl-hands, and they gave him trouble throughout his career. They were always injured, and he was always struggling to get them to heal.

Oh, Micky's wife appears to have been a white-wash. From what I've read, she was only interested in him for his boxing fame. Once he started talking retirement and began road construction, she abandoned him for an older man elsewhere. This happened before Micky's resurgence in the final fight of the movie.

Micky Ward's three biggest fights -- against Arturo Gatti -- aren't covered in the movie. They come late in his career. Ward wins the first, loses the next two -- a downward arc unsuitable for a movie about overcoming all odds for victory. All of those Gatti fights go the distance and are absolutely brutal. Two of the fights require hospitalization for both fighters. I keep thinking a movie should be made about Arturo Gatti. Maybe the studios are waiting for the Brazilian police to decide just how Gatti died. It's been ruled a suicide, but there's lots of suspicion falling on his wife. And I believe the police have reopened the case. But I digress; this is another movie not yet made.

All in all, The Fighter is a very good movie, mostly for the bizarre and fascinating family dynamics.