Review: The Fighter

I've never thought of myself as a sports-movie fan, but I'm realizing that I truly am a sucker for boxing movies. I don't watch real-life boxing matches, I'm not a fan of the sport other than that I've been known to like the workouts, but show me a movie where a man is jumping rope or a woman is working the heavy bag and you have my attention. The Fighter, directed by David O. Russell (Three Kings) and based on real-life personalities, is no exception.

The Fighter is about two brothers, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), either of whom  could be described by the film's title. Dicky is an ex-fighter who had his moment in the spotlight years before, allegedly knocking out Sugar Ray Leonard. Dicky is supposed to be training his little brother so Micky's boxing career can take off, but he has what is eventually revealed as a serious drug problem and Micky is left to struggle on his own. The fights that Dicky and the brothers' mom Alice (Melissa Leo) are setting up for Micky do nothing to help him, either.

Eventually Micky is left to decide whether to continue with his mother as his business manager and his brother as his trainer, or find another way to try to make it as a boxer and face the wrath of his very large, very close family. He's also trying to cultivate a romance with local bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), whom his sisters and mom can't stand.

The story is fairly old hat -- it could be the plot of a Forties boxing movie, perhaps with Paul Muni. A blue-collar guy getting up in years is trying to find the best way to follow his dream career without betraying his roots and family, et cetera, et cetera. But the performances in this movie push it way above the standard storyline. Wahlberg has been in some stinkers lately (he was totally wasted in The Lovely Bones) but here he shines in a way I hadn't seen since The Departed and Invincible (another sports movie that felt like it was better than it deserved to be).

The showy powerhouse performances in The Fighter are from Melissa Leo and Christian Bale, as matriarch Alice Ward and Dicky Eklund, respectively. Leo manages a complex portrayal of someone who could easily have been nothing but monstrous. Bale is an amazingly believable drug addict/braggadacio ex-fighter, and his scenes in the second half of the movie are even better than the first. Both these performances are the type people consider for awards, and I won't argue with that, but I preferred the more subtle characters.

I don't just mean Wahlberg, but I believe my favorite character in the movie is Wahlberg's dad, George Ward, as portrayed by Jack McGee. He's long-suffering but not afraid to do what it takes to help his son get his career moving in the right direction. Amy Adams is very good in a role that's not typical for her -- it's the usual Supporting Girlfriend, but she adds a believable hard shell and is a big improvement over her whiny portrayal of Julie Powell. (I wish she'd played Powell like Charlene in this movie; it might have worked better. But I digress.)

I thought Micky and Dicky's huge, mean sisters were a little too stereotypical, but Massachusetts native Jenn Brown tells me that women in the Lowell area would certainly have had hair like that in the 1980s, and would have acted like that too. The fight scene on Charlene's patio is priceless ... almost as good as the fight scenes in the actual boxing ring.

The Fighter is not an innovative movie -- it's far more traditional than director Russell's previous film, I Heart Huckabees. It's a sports melodrama given a boost by the fine acting overall, and avoiding the pitfalls of too much sentimentality. I could maybe take my dad to this movie, and he might like it. Plus you get shirtless, sweaty Marky Mark, and for some of us, that goes a long way to improving a film.