Login
While it never truly rises above the genre conventions and plot beats of both biographical and sports films, The Figher is still a very well made example of its type of film(s). The central quartet of performers are all finely balanced even when some appear to be flying towards caricature and over-the-top theatricality. But since a quick glance at footage from the HBO footage of the family proves that each of these actor essays are correct, we believe and care even more about The Figher. And isn’t it nice to see a movie about someone succeeding who truly deserves it after working so damn hard?
Unlike most boxing movies which focus solely and primarily upon the boxer’s training to gain or regain a championship, The Fighter spends most of its time showing us a family for whom the term ‘dysfunctional’ is a good starting point. Mark Wahlberg is the quiet, solid and steady fighter of the title, Micky Ward. He’s being trained by his older half-brother Dicky, played to twitchy motor-mouthed drug fueled perfection by Christian Bale, with his chain-smoking mom, a deliciously OTT Melissa Leo, as his manager and a pack of seven sisters from Hell on their trail. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Ward seems to be lacking a personality, when your mother is some kind of funhouse version of Snow White and your sisters are her aerosoled and bleached seven dwarves, the only proper way to rebel and carve out your own identity is to be a still and normal as possible.
And all of this feels right, because we’re given glimpses of the real family at the very end of the movie. Dicky really is that wild, unhinged, motor-mouthed and insane. And Micky really is that staid and calm center amongst the swirling chaos. The bigger the cigarettes, the cheaper the clothes and more blue the language, the more and more it feels like the proper family and place. But the real beating heart is the complicated relationship between Micky, Dicky and Alice trying to manage his career and his new relationship with Charlene, played by Amy Adams as a tough-as-nails working girl.
Dicky and Alice are distrustful of any outsider trying to worm their way into the familiar strum und drag. And Micky loves his family, but knows that they’ve got enough issues to keep a team of psychologists employed for decades. So when tough broad Charlene comes into his life, he’s not stupid enough to ignore it. Once Charlene enters into their lives she isn’t afraid to tell them to their faces what their problems are and how they’re disturbingly co-dependent on Micky’s failures and not his successes. If Micky continues to fail as a boxer, Alice will always be employed and able to have some control over his life. I wouldn’t call Alice a mother-from-hell, but she’s definitely some strange mutation of stage-mother. And how Dicky is really holding him back by teaching him his techniques only, and not teaching him to develop and hone his own style of boxing.
Notice that I have talked very little about any actual boxing in The Fighter, probably because that’s the least interesting aspect of the film. It is also the most perfunctory. It’s plain as day that David O. Russell was more interested in exploring the family dynamics, the flavor and emotional/social geography of Lowell, and the anger in this blue-collar community. The boxing, while an important aspect, is no different than any other boxing films, especially the climatic fight which distinctly lacks any energy, tension of dance-like choreography for the actors to try to execute. It’s clear that the genre conventions demanded that the ending occur exactly when and how it does, as does the real life story which this sticks very faithfully to, but that doesn’t mean it’s very interesting.
