The Fighter

With The Fighter, director David O. Russell (known for his idiosyncratic comedies like Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, and I ♥ Huckabees) takes on the usually uninspired genre of the Inspirational Sports Docudrama and turns it into a wonderfully engaging character study of, not one, but four memorable characters. Mark Wahlberg stars as the Lowell Massachusetts-born, junior welterweight title winner Micky Ward, a rising star in the boxing ring who is trained to greatness by his half-brother, Dicky, a crack-addicted former boxing champ played by Christian Bale. Part of Micky’s charm is that, like the town he’s from, he’s proud of his perennial underdog status, but under the guidance of his brother, the management of his mother, and a budding relationship with his future wife, Micky ends up with a shot at the championship.

Russell’s determination to give us a movie that surprises and excites while still following all the rules, tropes, and hackneyed maxims of the true-life, come-from-behind, long-shot-triumphing-over-adversity, sports narrative is thrilling. The raw, go-for-broke energy of the four stars sweeps you up and never lets go. These actors all make BIG choices in this picture. We’re used to seeing that from Bale, but Melissa Leo as Alice Eklund-Ward and Amy Adams as Charlene Fleming deliver performances of such controlled abandon they steal the film from the two leads, who themselves deliver some career-best work.

Walberg is the only member of the cast to downplay his character, but in doing this he too leans into the kind of performance he’s best at – the big, tough lug who seems to have a lot going on internally that only gets expressed in a few explosive moments. The circumstances of Micky’s life, especially the burden of loyalty he feels to his mother and his brother—both of whom are of great help to him while simultaneously dragging him down—play out across Walberg’s face. Just as in his wonderful star-making turn in Boogie Nights, the actor knows he doesn’t have to do very much to transmit what his character must be experiencing from moment to moment.

Walberg and Bale play in entirely different registers without ever feeling like they’re acting in different movies. Likewise, Leo and Adams each play tough-as-nails Massachusetts broads by drawing on a clearly different set of skills and approaches as actors, and this compliments the opposing nature of their characters, who couldn’t be more contradictorily hard-wired.

There have been so many Boston-set pictures recently that movies taking place in this region have become a sub-genre unto themselves, with a set of clichés so well worn they’ve become a joke. But rather than try to circumvent all that, everyone in this film leans heavily into the Massachusetts of it all. Dropped r’s fly, insane physical injuries are treated as mere scrapes, and characters compete to one-up each other’s hardscrabble backgrounds. The film dances on the edge of parody, but the commitment of the actors to their characterizations keeps everything grounded in its own reality. It certainly helps that the film sticks closely to the truth. Details like the fact Micky and Dicky have seven sisters who all seem to share the same hair, fashion sense, attitude and opinions feel as ridiculously exaggerated as the fact that these guys are called Micky and Dicky. But by embracing these truths, Russell and his cast give themselves license to go over the top without crossing the line into mockery.

The Fighter delivers everything audiences could want in a traditional sports drama—with all the required beats, the action in the ring, the set-backs, the triumphs, the way professional goals weigh on personal commitments and vice versa—but it delivers these goods in a distinctive, surprising, and wonderfully over-wrapped package.

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The fierce commitment to HUGE choices made by four great stars and a fearless director transform what could have been a run-of-the-mill "Inspirational Sports Docudrama" into something exciting and distinctive.