The Fighter Review: Pulling the Punches that Count

David O. Russell's The Fighter is a solid film but it treads over ever-so-familiar territory.

"Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts that is struggling to make a name for himself. His management team consists of his brother, Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale), and his mother, Alice Ward (Melissa Leo). Dicky used to be a fighter himself: his claim to fame is that he knocked Sugar Ray Leonard down in a fight many years ago. However, Dicky has fallen from grace due to a crack cocaine addiction.

Micky meets Charlene (Amy Adams) while she is tending bar one night and begins to date her. When Dicky's drug problems land him in jail, Charlene urges Micky to find a different management team. After much coaxing, he does and things begin to go his way. But Micky can't escape his family ties.

There are quite a few problems with this film. Beginning with the title. Who exactly is the fighter? Is it Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward or Christian Bale's Dicky Ecklund? Because Micky doesn't fight anything in this movie, with the exception of his opponents in the ring. Everywhere else he gets railroaded. He lets his mother and Dicky rule his life. They pick his opponents and decide when he fights, even if he ends up taking a beating for fighting out of his weight class. He has no backbone. That is until Amy Adams enters the film as Charlene and serves her solitary function: to fight Micky's familial battles for him and be his backbone. At the moment of confrontation when Micky is supposed to inform his mother that he is switching management, he doesn't. It is Charlene that speaks up and says what needs to be said.

Dicky Ecklund on the other hand is fighting everything. He's fighting his crack addiction. He's fighting against the law. He's even fighting against the reality of the present, thinking he is going to make a comeback as a boxer in his forties. Christian Bale is electric in this role. Many times has Christian Bale played the very serious, gloomy character, yet in this role, the role of man struggling with addiction and the loss of grace, he is the complete opposite. Dicky is not a good man, yet it is impossible not to like him. He is engaging and charming in every scene, even at his worst he is completely sympathetic. It really is a shame that he is an ancillary character to this story because his journey is far more interesting than anyone else's in the film.



The tone of the film is a little bizarre. Simply put it feels like the actors are in different movies. Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, and Amy Adams are in a character driven drama while Melissa Leo and everybody else are in an exaggerated comedy. Never is that more clear than when Micky's sisters appear on the screen. They are numerous and David O. Russell always manages to place all of them in a single frame. He also manages to make them look as unattractive as possible, yellowing their teeth and dressing them in shabby clothing. It's done for comedy and is caricature but it is pushed way too far and feels very out of place given the material that is being dealt with in the film.

The fight sequences are shot in an interesting way, at least in concept. David O. Russell found the original director of the HBO broadcasts of the fights and got him to recreate the fights shot for shot. This included using the cameras from the 1990s that the were originally used to shoot the fights. This sounds interesting in concept. However, in execution it makes the fight scenes, well, look like they were shot on cameras from the 1990s. It's striking at first, but as the fights continue, it becomes clear that this is not a recreation of the fights - it is instead a recreation of the experience of watching the fights in HBO in the 1990s. The choice to do this adds a layer of separation from the action and makes it less engaging despite how well choreographed the fights are.

As far as the story, it follows a pretty tried and true formula. Micky has to battle his way up from low class beginnings and low levels of the boxing world to get to the big fight, the fight that will change his life forever. It's a story that has been made a dozen times over. The interesting twist on the film is the inclusion of Dicky and his journey, although it feels a little cheapened as its main reason for inclusion is to be an obstacle for Micky to overcome on his journey.

To be clear, this movie isn't a bad one. It is just an oddly put together movie. But despite some bizarre choices, The Fighter is ultimately a very formulaic, middle of the road story. Although it hints at much more interesting and unique story with Dicky Ecklund, ultimately the focus is placed on the more conventional and safe story of Micky Ward, making the film more acceptable to a wide audience but more forgettable to film history.