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Saturday, December 18, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
The Fighter
Family Fisticuffs,
Heavyweight Emotion
Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund and Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward in "The
Fighter", directed by David O. Russell.
Paramount
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Saturday,
December 18, 2010
Family often gets in the way of business. Parents are sometimes said to be
the killer of a child's dreams. David O. Russell's "The Fighter"
illustrates these realities well. The film, which opened yesterday across
the U.S., is based on the true story of boxing brothers "Irish" Micky Ward and
Dicky Eklund, one an up-and-coming welterweight, the other a washed-up
crack-addicted pugilist whose own fleeting glory was facing champion Sugar Ray
Leonard in the boxing ring in the late 1970s.
Dicky (Christian Bale), the elder brother, trains younger sibling Micky (Mark
Wahlberg) for a run to the boxing summit. Their mother, Alice (Melissa
Leo) gets Micky what she can for him fight-wise: she's also his manager.
Soon though, Micky will be shadowboxing his own family, including his seven
lay-about sisters, who appear to have no job between them.
"The Fighter" has a heart of pure emotion and energy, displayed through its
music (The Heavy's "How You Like Me Now?") and the acting of both Amy Adams as
Charlene, and Mr. Bale, though the latter has done better, deeper work ("The
Machinist") than the showy, charismatic turn here. The talented Welsh
actor is a livewire and while he gets the sinewy Dicky to a tee, he sometimes
apes Mr. Eklund more than channels him. Good work like this occasionally
has the effect of stagnating a film, but Mr. Bale's performance in the film's
second half is stellar.
Ms. Adams lends her bartender Charlene a bold, passionate certitude, perhaps
masking her own desperation to belong to a winner. Charlene is disdained
by Micky's envious, ravenous sisters as "an MTV girl", their euphemism for "skank".
Charlene's eyes dart furiously as Micky's family circle bickers about what's
right. Charlene seems one step from abandonment, a lonelier figure than
she lets on. Ms. Adams' work will be underestimated here, but her
character may well be the most interesting in the film.
Mr. Russell (who directed Mr. Wahlberg in two other films including "Three
Kings") ably captures the working class fabric of Lowell, Massachusetts, circa
1993, when and where this tale is set. "The Fighter", which works best as
an emotional tug-of-war between multiple families of blood or brawn, has at its
center a fine, low-key performance by Mr. Wahlberg. Micky could throw up
his hands and easily succumb to the internecine family scenarios he's embroiled
in, but Mr. Wahlberg gives his silent warrior a strong focus, channeling the
peripheral family chatter to fight his way up the boxing ladder.
Each of the characters including Micky's girlfriend Charlene lives vicariously
through Micky, but it's Alice who is the viper of this bunch, mixing a professed
love for her son with the possessiveness not of a mother but of an opportunist.
Alice truly believes she's doing the right thing, though the state she really
lives in is denial, not Massachusetts. Alice knows her family's shortcomings
while skulking blindly past her own.
Like Mr. Bale, Ms. Leo has done better work ("Frozen River"), but as Alice she's
also nomination-worthy. Alice has what she believes are best intentions,
even as she favors one son over another. It's an edgy, flamboyant turn,
but there are two scenes where the internal, more subtle side of Ms. Leo's
acting emerges beautifully. There's some good dialogue in the film's
quieter moments, scripted by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson.
The actors though, enliven and broaden otherwise ordinary material.
As a film featuring boxing, "The Fighter", as with so many others of its ilk,
rarely rises beyond its formulaic conventions. It's predictable, offering
little new boxing-wise on a cinematic level (which for film purposes is a sport
that has inherent limitations camera-wise), but what's best about it is that
it's often both a loud and quiet dialogue between two brothers at different
stages of their lives. The film is also about how an uneasy give-and-take
relationship between opposite siblings stabilizes in order to achieve results.
"The Fighter" is clearly less about boxing than about brothers, and it's still
goose-bump good.
With: Jack McGee, Mickey O'Keefe, Melissa McMeekin, Bianca Hunter, Erica
McDermott, Jill Quigg, Dendrie Taylor, Kate O'Brien, Jenna Lamia, Frank Renzulli,
Paul Campbell, Caitlin Dwyer, Ted Arcidi.
"The Fighter" is rated R by the Motion
Picture Association Of America for language throughout, drug content some violence
and sensuality. The film's running time is one hour and 56 minutes.
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