The Fighter

So, we have Mark Wahlberg as a down on his luck boxer, Micky Ward, being managed by his mother and his ex-boxer and now-crack-addict brother Dicky Eklund, played by Christian Bale. Essentially, we follow him from his last unsuccessful fight, through a period in which he quits the sport, gets back into the game, and, through a change of attitude and management, manages to turn his career around, and get a shot at a world welterweight title. This is based on a true story, by the way.

All this is as maybe, though. We've seen plenty of films following this plot, and many of them are about boxing. One of them is Rocky. So really, this needs to be a bit more than a boxing movie to distinguish itself. Fortunately, it does.

What this film is about, more than anything, is the pressures of family. Because for all that he's a big tough boxer, he's under the thumb of his mother, backed up by her impressive array of incredibly chavvy daughters, who is determined that only she knows how to run his career best, and that his brother is the only man to train him, given how he's a local legend boxer. Ward himself is a bit of a mumbly cipher, without much to say for himself; the real powerhouse performances in this film are by Melissa Leo as his domineering mother, and Christian Bale, who'd better be getting an Oscar, frankly.

Bale has basically completely submerged his usual brooding psycho screen persona, and is playing a the Massachusetts equivalent of a cheeky chirpy cockney, who's full of himself, and his past glories, full of big promises, but just as likely to abandon his family and go missing in the local crack den as anything else. This is the performance to see the film for, because it's him who has the real personal journey, hitting rock bottom before he can rise again and be of some use to his brother. There's a clip at the end, over the credits, of the real Dicky Eklund and Micky Ward, and you immediately know who you're looking at, because in the past two hours, Bale's caught him to the life.

The direction's pretty workmanlike, a sort of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler Lite, nice and gritty and realistic, but nothing that does anything more than document the story. The script's pretty lovely, and adds some nice and understated comic touches to what otherwise would be a grim and dour underdog sports movie. Certainly worth a watch, definitely if you like a boxing film, but also for anyone who likes to watch an actor like Christian Bale on top form.