Film Review: The Fighter

Part of the magic of The Fighter for people around here is that the film has been made by local folks using a local location in a story about local people who are still around, still ‘characters’ in Lowell. In fact, when Christian Bale was on stage accepting his Golden Globe (both Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won for best supporting actor), the guy he was playing, Dicky Eklund, lived up to Bale’s characterization by pushing his way up on stage to hog the limelight. It was life imitating art imitating life.

As someone who boxed in the 70s when there was literally no such thing as a girl in a boxing gym (I had to take private lessons), I sure love a good fight flick. The Fighter is one that deserves its flurry of nominations and awards.

It’s also a film about family – showing what an excruciating and passive/aggressive institution it can be. The Fighter highlights the crazy mixture of secret favoritism with the suffocating “us against the world” ethos that is dumped on individual family members.

Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is the up and coming fighter being coached by his brother Dicky (Bale), a drug-addled former neighborhood fight hero. Their mother (Melissa Leo) is his manager but because she vastly prefers Dicky over Micky, she doesn’t really have Micky’s interests at heart. There is an unfortunate chorus of some seven sisters, each of whom is less appealing and dumber than the next – and this is a huge, irritating flaw in the film. They look painfully out of date; they are indistinguishable, always presented as a squawking babble; and they have no role to play other than as further evidence of the matriarch’s despotic reign. (When, I ask in an aside, is this gang of Boston film boys going to write some decent parts for women? Yes, yes, I mean besides mothers.)

Micky has a daughter he seems to adore and a difficult relationship with her mother. Dicky has a son, who seems to live with the mother and sisters but appears entirely unattached to any particular woman. He seems more like an accessory for Dicky than a dependent.

The fight world is authentically described – from scruffy local gyms with coaches trying to help the kids to the big stakes machinations of criminals and businessmen (usually the same people). Lowell felt just like Lowell. And the acting wasn’t bad at all. Bale was pretty stupendous. Wahlberg displayed an emotional range from A to A, all confusion and eyes-in-the-headlights, that apparently reflects the character he is playing. Melissa Leo is subtle, delusional and strident in turns. And Amy Adams (at last I know who she is) does her best as Micky’s girlfriend to protect him from those who are just using him. Mickey O’Keefe, the Lowell cop helping to train Micky Ward, is played wonderfully by himself.

If you cannot bear seeing someone onscreen being punched about and bleeding and dazed, then you should either close your eyes during the fight scenes or stay home on this one. If you’re looking for a poignant family tale, there isn’t anyone here you are likely to deeply care about. It’s a good swiftly moving film with some terrific scenes, not the least when Dicky is in prison. Of the few Academy Award nominated films I’ve seen so far, it’s up there at the top of my list with The King’s Speech.

Comments

[Allen Young]

I just saw an excellent boxing film, set in Nazi Germany. The title is "Before the Fall." No good parts for women,however. Lots of eye candy for a gay man or anyone else who likes youthful Nordic types!

[Sue Katz]

I don't think I know the film Allen - I'm definitely going to look it up. Thanks for the tip.