Film Review | The Fighter

There’s a nice symmetry to The Fighter’s success: for a film about unconventional but resilient family ties, it’s rather appropriate that David O. Russell’s boxing drama took home two ‘Best Supporting’ Oscars. It may be that more prominence was attached to Christian Bale’s win: his depiction of a crack-addicted, has-been boxer Dicky Eklund was pretty much an Oscar shoe-in from the get go.

But it was Melissa Leo, who plays Dicky’s ambitious mum – ambitious not just as her sons’ self-proclaimed boxing manager, but biologically too: Dicky has eight siblings – who made early headlines after she dropped an accidental f-bomb early on during her acceptance speech.

Bale, who experienced a far more intensified version of a similar incident last year, when his expletive-ridden tantrum on the set of Terminator: Salvation was made public, must have been relieved to defer controversy onto one of his colleagues.

 And in a sense, a push-pull experience of people making it (or not) through tough times is what makes the film such an endearing elixir of grimy realism and Hollywood-style rags-to-riches triumph.

While Bale may have received all the accolades, the true centre of the (true) story is his younger half-brother ‘Irish’ Micky Ward (Mark Whalberg), who aspires to become a boxer in his own right but is torn between his loyalty to a large, poor family and the desire to train with true professionals.

Dicky, who is meant to train him up, is hamstrung by drug addiction, which his loving mother and erstwhile manager appears to be entirely ignorant of. And while Dicky achieved some measure of fame back in 1978 (at the ripe old age of 21), when he appeared to knock out Sugar Ray Leonard (though it wasn’t an official win: judges ruled that Sugar Ray slipped), his status as local legend in Lowell, Massachusetts is wearing thin, though he still lives in complete denial: when an HBO film crew comes over to film a documentary about the effects of crack cocaine, Dicky remains convinced that they’re making a film about his comeback.

Finding love in the local waitress Charlene (Amy Adams), Mickey grows more and more distanced from his troubled, chaotic family, and aims to set out on his own. But the scrappy rabble will not let go without a fight.

That the film has the lazy, in-built ‘based on a true story’ hook should be more than obvious, but the fact that it’s masterfully executed should not go unmissed either. Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees), a director not too far distant from Bale in the on-set tantrum stakes, is clearly out to redeem his teetering-on-the-brink career with this one.

There’s just the right amount of close-ups, dirt and grime to get us in the mood, along with a careful, calculated instinct for the ‘home video’ approach so amenable for working class settings. But if this sounds like a rabid collection of Hollywood-misery clichés, it’s ultimately redeemed by its wrangling humanity.

The actors know they’re in for a good thing: after all, Rocky has paved this path, and they’d be fools not to take advantage of a more artsy approach to something so familiar. In a sense, Bale’s method-acted-to-death approach is almost tiring to watch: we’ve already seen him go ridiculously skinny in The Machinist, and watching him almost rip an entire family apart (while remaining doggedly loyal) is positively heartbreaking.

But really, my heart goes out to Whalberg, who maintains a difficult poise as the world crumbles around him. But in a lot of ways, the actors complement each other perfectly, balancing a tone that’s just right for the film itself: between complete despair and ecstasy, hemmed-in resignation and the adrenaline that comes with the anticipation of the next fight.

Boxing fans will find it a treat, I’m sure, but I was happy to have been ignorant of the outcome of each fight. Knowledge of Hollywood formula notwithstanding, I remained glued to my seat, ever hopeful that Mickey will, once again, punch his way to triumph.