Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Sometimes, when you don't expect something to be truly great, it goes and surprises the hell out of you and turns out to be just that. Like many of you, I'd seen the trailer for director David O. Russell's THE FIGHTER, his first film in far too long from the make of SPANKING THE MONKEY, FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, I HEART HUCKABEES, and his previous best work THREE KINGS. The two latter films star Mark Wahlberg, who has done arguably much of his best work under Russell's direction. But THE FIGHTER is an entirely different animal, possibly because this project has been Wahlberg's passion for the better part of the last decade. Not only is this the best performance in the actor's career, but the film itself easily ranks among the best of the year. There's a good chance you're going to be hearing me say that about a couple more films before the end of the year, for obvious reasons, but THE FIGHTER is so nakedly raw as a narrative and stylistically flawless that it's virtually impossible to escape its brutal grip.
Based on the lives of two real-life half-brothers, THE FIGHTER tells the story of Micky Ward (Wahlberg), a stepping-stone boxer through the mid- to late 1980s, who thinks he might actually have a shot at something great in the 1990s. Living in the working-class neighborhood of Lowell, Massachusetts, Micky is horribly mismanaged by his mother Alice (the phenomenal Melissa Leo) and trained by his unreliable half-brother Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale). Micky is time and again humiliated in the ring after being paired with fighters way above his weight class and taking some real pummelings. After his latest embarrassment of a match, Ward makes the decision to take some time off and determines if he even wants to continue down his path, and it's in this phase that he meets Charlene (Amy Adams), a one-time party girl and currently a bartender, who agrees to go on a date with Micky without much convincing.
Charlene might be the only person who has Micky's real interests at heart, and while she does not think he should quit boxing, she does encourage him to seek new management and a new trainer, which clearly doesn't sit well with the Ward/Eklund clan, which includes an endless supply of sisters and half-sisters. Meanwhile, Dickie has an HBO film crew following him, he says, because he's staging a boxing comeback of his own that the crew is documenting. Dickie was once a profession boxer who once knocked out Sugar Ray Leonard (some say Leonard tripped), and he serves as an inspiration to the younger Micky and taught him boxing fundamentals that he used throughout his career. But the film crew is actually following Dickie around because he's a former local hero turned crackhead.
It's no secret that Bale is a terrific actor, but his performance as Dickie could not have been achieved by any other actor--pure and simple. His combination of addict fast talk--loaded with excuses and lies--is jumbled in with his clear devotion to his brother's career. Of course, none of this stops him from letting Micky down time and time again, and the family is no help because even though they all know what he's into, no one will talk about or even admit that he's a junkie. I have such a clear memory of seeing HBO's HIGH ON CRACK STREET documentary featuring three crack addicts in Lowell, because it was the first time I really saw what crack does to people both emotionally and physically. Bale's Dickie embodies all of awful damage this drug renders on a person's mind, body and soul, but director Russell almost refuses to let us feel pity for pity for the man. It doesn't take long for Dickie to land up in jail, forcing Micky to get another trainer whether he wants one or not, so he uses the opportunity to cut his mother out of his career as well.
And under this new regime and using new techniques along with the ones his brother taught him, Micky starts to improve as a boxer and begins winning fights most didn't think he could. Charlene is an excellent one-woman support system, but Adams hardly plays her as a background player. She goes nose to nose with Alice and even exchanges blows with Micky's sisters, who think she's a skank and "MTV girl," which apparently means she's wild. Adams plays Charlene as a fully loaded pistol, who cowers before no one, and isn't afraid to scrap. She's also hopelessly sexy, as one would expect an MTV girl to be. But the film's real secret weapon (as opposed to Bale, who is the not-so-secret weapon) is Melissa Leo, who has had an impressive second half of 2010 between CONVICTION and WELCOME TO THE RILEYS, both of which feature her in very different roles than Alice, a woman convinced she's a little better than others because of the middling success of her sons. As Micky's manager, her only skills as a business negotiator are screaming and ultimatums. When Micky's new team makes him ban her from the gym, it's not difficult to understand why, and Leo is mind-blowingly great in this role. It becomes clear that Micky may be attracted to Charlene because she's got a lot of Alice's fire.
One of the style choices that Russell makes that I wholly approve of is how he handles the boxing matches themselves. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure we only see extended versions of three of Micky bouts. But rather than place the camera in the ring, weaving around and between the boxers, Russell does something I hadn't expected. He allows us to watch the fights on TV, relying on HBO or ESPN cameras to show the fight the way most of us view them, complete with the commentators' voices, and shots of the crowd, the corner men, the family. The end result is some of the most realistic-looking boxing I've seen in films in recent years. But Russell only does this for Micky's televised fights; some of his lesser matches, he offers up a bit more style, slow-mo, close-ups. The idea is so simple that it shouldn't be as effective as it is, but I found myself incredibly wrapped up in the contests as a result.
Eventually, Micky gets a title shot, and it's in these where Wahlberg brings us his A-game as an actor. His love of this man, this family, and this story are all over THE FIGHTER, but when he is faced with the very real possibility of seeing his dreams come true, he almost slips. At this point Dickie is released from prison a very different man. He's nine months clean, in great physical shape, and ready to be the steady hand he never was for Micky. Clearly wanting his brother in his corner, Micky nearly throws away months of positive work and achievements, but his faith in Dickie is unshaken, for better or worse and Wahlberg embodies this so clearly and confidently. Micky is a man with confidence issues, mother issues, and a lifetime of feeling like he's second best to the man he has most looked up to since he was a kid. And it's all there on Wahlberg's face--the uncertainty, the doubt, the fear. I'm still partial to what Wahlberg accomplished in BOOGIE NIGHTS, but his performance in THE FIGHTER might be his greatest technical achievement as an actor.
And on top of all these accolades, THE FIGHTER is engrossing entertainment and a triumphant underdog story that is certainly one of the greatest sports movies in my lifetime. For hours after seeing the film, my brain was battling itself trying to figure out which performance I loved the most or what my favorite moments were. I eventually gave in and realized that I loved every second of and every performance in THE FIGHTER, from Wahlberg, Bale, and Leo to the wonderfully scary ladies with the out-of-control hair who played the Ward sisters. The film is as inspirational as it is heartbreaking, as tough to watch at times as it is one of the most watchable films I've seen all year. Prepare to have the earth move under your feet.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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