Jim3k
12-24-2010, 02:15 AM
The Fighter is an odd movie to comment on. It is a partially true biopic about welterweight Micky Ward, focusing mainly on a narrow frame of Ward’s career, his comeback after his 1990 withdrawal from competition. Mark Wahlberg does the honors as Ward. Having made that observation, I must add that the film is formulaic in the sense that it is the story of an athlete overcoming adversity to win the title.
But that’s the back-story. What makes this film outstanding is the family story surrounding the boxing. Ward and his half-brother (ex-pug) Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), together with their mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo), and Micky’s girl Charlene (Amy Adams), accompanied by Ward’s seven sisters, create the most dysfunctional, yet completely believable, family I’ve recently seen in film.
The acting of the four leads is super-strong, with Melissa Leo, IMO, taking the AA award. She has become one of those actresses who just inhabits a character and forces the audience to believe the character to be real. She’s approaching national treasure level and hardly anyone is noticing. I first spotted her as Detective Kay Howard in the 1990’s Baltimore series, Homicide: Life on the Street. She’s made a number of movies and TV appearances, both before and since. But she came into her own in a minor part as a fortyish floozy in 2005’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. She was also marvelous in Frozen River (2008). She is much like Jessica Lange in that she often plays a fraying beauty. But both can also take on totally different characters and shine.
In The Fighter, the redheaded Leo is now a 50ish bleached blonde mother of nine adult children, a hard-nosed boxing manager who is extremely demanding in all things. Every family member, including her husband, shrinks from her ... but they obey …
And around her centrality revolve three other outstanding performances: Wahlberg, who is mostly taciturn, but beginning to question his mother’s expertise; Bale, who must overcome his own narcissism as well as crack addiction; and Adams who demands that Micky grow past his dominant family. All of these actors are truly outstanding, even as they expose their trailer-park family mentality and values. (Ironically, the sisters could be someone’s idea of an unhealthy Greek Chorus. Scary group, that.) Wahlberg actually does a very good job of understating Ward’s perceptions. Bale is given some meat with the Eklund character and you can just see the self-delusions which drive him. Adams is outstanding as she invades the family with new and, to them, unacceptable insights. She’s the catalyst for change and provides Micky with new eyes on his world. In one unforgettable scene, she brawls with the seven sisters and gains family respect. Momma driving away angry with a trash can stuck to her bumper is wonderfully funny.
If Leo doesn’t at least get an AA nomination, it will be a miscarriage. And, if you can get past the athlete formula, I think you will agree that this is certainly one of the best pictures of the year.
(As an aside, Ward was one of the toughest boxers of the 20th century. His battles with Arturo Gatti rival the Gene Fulmer-Carmen Basilio fights of 1959-60.)
But that’s the back-story. What makes this film outstanding is the family story surrounding the boxing. Ward and his half-brother (ex-pug) Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), together with their mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo), and Micky’s girl Charlene (Amy Adams), accompanied by Ward’s seven sisters, create the most dysfunctional, yet completely believable, family I’ve recently seen in film.
The acting of the four leads is super-strong, with Melissa Leo, IMO, taking the AA award. She has become one of those actresses who just inhabits a character and forces the audience to believe the character to be real. She’s approaching national treasure level and hardly anyone is noticing. I first spotted her as Detective Kay Howard in the 1990’s Baltimore series, Homicide: Life on the Street. She’s made a number of movies and TV appearances, both before and since. But she came into her own in a minor part as a fortyish floozy in 2005’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. She was also marvelous in Frozen River (2008). She is much like Jessica Lange in that she often plays a fraying beauty. But both can also take on totally different characters and shine.
In The Fighter, the redheaded Leo is now a 50ish bleached blonde mother of nine adult children, a hard-nosed boxing manager who is extremely demanding in all things. Every family member, including her husband, shrinks from her ... but they obey …
And around her centrality revolve three other outstanding performances: Wahlberg, who is mostly taciturn, but beginning to question his mother’s expertise; Bale, who must overcome his own narcissism as well as crack addiction; and Adams who demands that Micky grow past his dominant family. All of these actors are truly outstanding, even as they expose their trailer-park family mentality and values. (Ironically, the sisters could be someone’s idea of an unhealthy Greek Chorus. Scary group, that.) Wahlberg actually does a very good job of understating Ward’s perceptions. Bale is given some meat with the Eklund character and you can just see the self-delusions which drive him. Adams is outstanding as she invades the family with new and, to them, unacceptable insights. She’s the catalyst for change and provides Micky with new eyes on his world. In one unforgettable scene, she brawls with the seven sisters and gains family respect. Momma driving away angry with a trash can stuck to her bumper is wonderfully funny.
If Leo doesn’t at least get an AA nomination, it will be a miscarriage. And, if you can get past the athlete formula, I think you will agree that this is certainly one of the best pictures of the year.
(As an aside, Ward was one of the toughest boxers of the 20th century. His battles with Arturo Gatti rival the Gene Fulmer-Carmen Basilio fights of 1959-60.)