The Fighter *** (3 stars)

The Fighter – 3 stars

I don’t get the fascination with boxers. I don’t get it. I love an underdog story as much as anyone and I think boxing is an elegant sport that routinely gets a bad rap, but I still don’t get why every few years yet another underdog boxing movie comes around and makes everyone wet their pants talking about how good it is. I just don’t get it.

Yes, I liked Rocky. I liked Rocky more when Rocky was training or boxing than when he was talking, but I liked Rocky. I liked Raging Bull. It’s powerful, it’s raw: it’s vintage Scorsese. I even liked Girlfight and most of Million Dollar Baby, but there have been twenty movies in the last decade about underdog boxers. Twenty. That’s two movies a year. I just don’t see the point anymore.

All that being said, I enjoyed the Fighter. It was a well-made, well-directed story that I’ve seen 90% of nineteen times before during the last decade. Poor kid leads a hard life, becomes a boxer, can’t make the cut, then something changes and after a few small wins, then a big win, he/she gets a shot at the championship. Not a new idea. Not even particularly clever, but here they pull it off admirably by taking on the story from a different angle: by making the movie about boxing about family instead of boxing.

It’s an interesting idea that, with a lesser cast, would have failed. But it doesn’t. Wahlberg plays the central character of Micky Ward with a younger-brother shyness and innocence that makes him both likable and almost completely forgettable. Though this denies him the chance to make this movie his latest run at Oscar, it does allow him to not be the standout or even the focus of the film. Rather, it makes him the flagpole on which the rest of the cast is flown.

First, Amy Adams: she’s been charming in Enchanted, shyly innocent in Proof, irritating and narcissistic in Julie/Julia and even saccharine-cutesy in Leap Year, but she’s never before pulled off tough and proud. Here, everything you’ve come to expect from her other movies is gone. She’s rough, she’s blunt, she’s dominant, she’s great. It’s almost impossible to imagine her cursing and punching in another girl’s face after her turns as Amelia Earhart and Delysia Lafosse, but she fills the role with such confidence and ambition that I never questioned her authenticity. As Micky’s girlfriend Charlene, she’s perfect. If not for Christian Bale, she would have been the standout of the film.

But there was Christian Bale. And nobody was going to take the show from him.

Bale has always been a talented actor. Though now known by most as Batman, he’s played roles ranging from American Psycho to Newsies over an almost twenty-five year career and has almost always been believable (there was the disaster of John Connor, but we’re all working on erasing the existence of Terminator: Salvation from our memories anyway, so let’s not hold that one against him). He’s a chameleon of a man, one of the few actors in American history capable of both being a star unto himself and a character actor. Here though, Bale has outdone himself. He has not only created a character somehow both loathsome and lovable, but has transformed completely. Returning to his Machinist past, to play Dicky Eklund Bale has dropped down to a skin-and-bones physique that somehow still vibrates with energy and needs. He manages to make you forget that it’s him playing the role, and for a character actor there is no greater confirmation of a job well done. The job wasn’t an easy one either: Dicky is a former contender in the boxing world who grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, a true Irish blue collar neighborhood. a 40-year-old nothing who now lives in a haze of past dreams and dulled realities. He’s Micky’s older brother, his trainer, and a crack-addicted shadow of himself still obsessed with one match fourteen years past when he knocked down one of the greats. A match he didn’t even win. For the athletic, confident Welshman Bale, the transformation is complete and will earn him another nomination. Even if you don’t enjoy the movie, his performance alone is worth the price of a ticket.

There are other notable performances too, but the long and short of it is this: the movie isn’t anything particularly special, but the performances are. So go see the movie so that when Oscar time rolls around you’ll know why so many people from this one film were nominated.


One last note: If you do see the movie, let me know who you think the title refers to. Because I don’t think it refers to Micky at all.

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Being out of the game for 19 months will make you rusty, but it’s not enough to keep you shut for good.

I missed this. It’s good to be back.