The Fighter Movie Review …

Mark Wahlberg stars in Paramount Pictures’ inspirational docudrama exploring the remarkable rise of Massachusetts-born, junior welterweight title winner “Irish” Micky Ward. A determined pugilist whose career in the ring was shepherded by his loyal half-brother, Dicky (Christian Bale), a hard-living boxer-turned-trainer whose own career in the ring was nearly sent down for the count due to drugs and crime.

The Fighter recounts the tale of how the perennial underdog Irish Micky rebounded from a disheartening series of defeats to win both the WBU Intercontinental Lightweight title with nothing more than a fierce combination of determination and hard work. But as it turns out for Micky, the battle in his own life with his tight knit extended family is just as fierce as the battles in the ring.

The moment The Fighter was released, there was instant Oscar buzz of this film and of the actors, and all that attention is well deserved. For some reason, boxing films have always done well in Hollywood, and The Fighter is yet another great addition to the vast collection of boxing films. But how does this film featuring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale stack up against the rest? The best description would be that The Fighter has the heart of Rocky (1976) and the grittiness of Raging Bull (1980).

The story of Micky Ward, like most other sport films, is the story of the down trodden reaching for greatness with nothing more than perseverance and determination. Ward’s transformation from a “stepping stone” in the boxing world to his eventual championship is a remarkable metamorphosis. For most sport film, it is this aspect that the film embraces, which creates a heart-warming and pleasant film, but often leaves the film lopsided. The other half of the film, which fills most of the movie’s 114 minute running time, shows a gritty, yet realistic, view on the world outside of the ring.

In the case of Micky Ward, the dark side of his life is his tight-knit extended family that is, perhaps without their knowledge, being over-controlling of Micky’s boxing career. The other baring insight that the audience learns is that Ward’s step-brother, Dicky, is a former boxer turned trainer trying to get his own career restarted, but his life has been ruined by a heavy addiction to cocaine and other drug use.

Where The Fighter is a lot like every other sport film that have been made over the years and is quite predictable because we know that it is a true story, it is perhaps one of the best acted boxing films ever made. The three lead actors give the performances of their careers to make The Fighter a truly fantastic film. In the forefront of the film is Mark Wahlberg who plays the great boxer Micky “Irish” Ward.

When the film began, I thought we were going to get another typical “Mark Wahleberg” performance, but what we get is a subdued boxer that is living in the shadows of his brother’s once rising career. Forced to make the tough decisions in order to please his family, his new girl friend, and his own life goals, Wahlberg plays a man shackled by his own need to be a good person.

The surprise performance in The Fighter is Amy Adams’ who plays Ward’s new love interest Charlene Fleming. In a lot of ways, Charlene is exactly like Ward because she tried to make something great out of herself by going to college but ended up serving drinks in the local pub. She’s smart, independent, and quite attractive, but more interesting, she acts as the voice of Micky who is unable to voice his own opinions about his own career to his controlling family. But the show stealer of The Fighter is none other than one of my long time favourite actors, Christian Bale.

In a move that is reminiscent of his film The Machinist (2003), don’t feel bad, almost no one saw it, Bale has lost almost all of his weight to look like the disgustingly gaunt and aged Dicky Eklund, step brother of Micky Ward. Eklund is trying to regain his boozing status as being the first boxer to knock down Sugar Ray Leonard during a professional match. Eklund taught Ward everything he knows about fighting, but the time for a successful future in boxing for Ward runs against the successful past in boxing for Eklunds.

Eklund is now trying to spank the monkey on his back known as crack. In fact he is the subject of an HBO documentary about crack. Eklund gets high, misses training sessions, and breaks laws to feed his addiction. Bale’s depiction of Dicky Eklund is amazing spot on from his charismatic nature to his many drug problems, but his character is the most dynamic of the film, and his transformation through the film is amazing. And like I already said, I’m a huge fan, and this is easily his best performance to date.

The great thing about The Fighter is that it is an Oscar worthy film that is actually watchable by the majority of people because it isn’t such an incredibly heavy or dark film. The Fighter is full of great performances, has a heart warming story featuring the underdog, and features some great boxing sequences. What’s really great about the film is its realism.

When there are boxing sequences, it looks like there are really boxing because they keep their hands up to block punches, unlike Rocky who liked to block punches with his face, and there are no cheesy training montages, only real life training in a gym. There are also some wonderful performances in The Fighter, in particular Christian Bale, who will probably receive an Oscar nomination, with a strong chance of winning in the supporting category. In the end, we have a great film that I highly recommend to everyone. For those who have seen other boxing dramas, you will probably know how this film ends, but whether it is predictable or not, the end of the film is a well worth the pay off.

The Fighter Movie Trailer

The story is pretty simple. We have two sisters Rose and Norah Lorkowski (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt … we saw them together in Charlie Wilson’s War few nights ago, what a coincidence) who try to make their small business work. Rose has a 7 year old son and her sister is as demanding as the kid, not being able to get by on her own. Since her maid job doesn’t pay that well, Rose gets a tip from her ex-school BF, who’s actually married now but loves a passionate night with her, while endlessly promising to divorce and marry her), about a business opportunity.

He’s a cop and finds out that cleaning a crime scene, even if gory, does pay pretty well.

The start is not easy, especially when you start from zero, but they do start getting some good revenue and becoming more professional, by being able to afford a van and all the protection equipment needed when dealing with bio hazard.

After Norah succeeds in burning down a house and leaving them with 40 thousands dollars to pay back (they are uninsured), Rose tries to really understand if this is the good option for her or maybe she should go back to her old job, which pays less but it doesn’t come with all this responsibility.

The movie could have worked as a comedy, but I think they try to show and deal with too much stuff. The 2 women still try to deal with their mother suicide, when they were little, their shaky relationship and other problems, so it’s getting close to a drama or at least a ‘dramedy’, since I’ve heard about this term pretty often lately.

Even if this won’t go in my top 5 movies of all time, it was still an interesting one. The best idea to get from it would be to have the courage to find your way and work. Even if cleaning crime scenes is not “fun” or even “cool”, it all comes down to earning a living and trying to provide for your family. In the end it’s good money and it’s been earned through hard work.

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is no stranger to this life. He’s been elected as a Texas liberal Democrat congressman and his life is simple and good. His staff is made up by voluptuous women, he’s filling some of his lonely nights with the right-wing Houston millionaire socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), who is now alarmed of the attacks over Afghanistan by the Russian army. The USA cannot intervene officially, that’s for sure, but there’s gotta be a way to help the Afghans who are slaughtered like cattle by the aviation raids and the bombs planted on the ground.

The movie is based on George Crile’s book, published in 2003 and it looks like this Charlie Wilson is not a fictional character. Which of course will surely give us great confidence in our politicians.

So, back to the action.

Since they cannot send money and weapons without turning the “cold war” into a very nasty “normal” one, the USA have to look for another way. Because Joanne won’t settle with a “no” and Charlie, after a visit to a refugee camp in Afghanistan is so shaken he’s almost lost interest in late night boozing.

They need the help of the CIA and, since falling from his superior’s grace (after breaking the office window and impolitely asking the boss to f.. himself), Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) doesn’t really have anything better to do, so he’s willing to support the cause.

The USA would have all the logistics, but they cannot afford to have any weapons marked “USA” in Afghanistan, so they need Soviet weapons. Paying for this is not an issue. From 5 to 10 million it takes just a meeting and people don’t really pay attention to what they are voting on. This is how Charles Wilson, as part of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, can get funding just with a call. Again, yet another showcase of how things are done by the people elected to guard the public interest.

Since the Israelis do have a lot of guns and could send them to Afghanistan through Pakistan, the only predicament is they cannot really be convinced to work together. Not to mention not even the Afghan people can know how they got helped. This is where Gust comes in handy. He knows the right Israeli guy to help them.

Charlie runs his little show from the shadow while also escaping arrest for coke-consuming in Las Vegas. How does he do it? The witness claims she’s seen him consuming in the Cayman Islands, out of the US jurisdiction. So, even if a proved sinner, he cannot be convicted.

This is the kind of politician he is. This is the kind many of them are. Still, when it comes to winning his secret war, Charlie did rise to the occasion. He was able to raise $1 billion to help with the war logistics. Still, the moment all was solved and the Afghan people could have used schools (half their population was under 14), the USA representatives who got involved in raising that billion, couldn’t be convinced to raise 1 million. Or, as Charlie had said:

These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we fucked up the endgame.

Even if a biographical political drama, the movie does have his funny scenes and is easy to watch, even by people who couldn’t care less about wars and politics. The cast is quite good and the 3 main actors are performing as expected. Totally recommended.

First we have Julia Child (Meryl Streep) a “high-spirited” American wife, who’s following her diplomat husband in Paris (Stanley Tucci – you know him from The Devil Wears Prada, where they acted together). Bored to death she decides to go to some classes. Bridge seems too complicated for her, while the cooking class for the beginners is really annoying “I know how to boil an egg” she says, asking to be moved to the advanced class. There she’s the only woman among male chefs, who really know their business.

After getting her feathers ruffled a bit, she comes home decided to change the situation. It’s one of the funniest scenes in the movie, she’s cutting onions (there’s a huge pile on the table) and her husband enters the home almost suffocating. Funny or not, she manages to catch up and becomes one of the best students in the class.

She then is invited to cooperate for a cooking book writing, then she’ll be the one to publish it – Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Meryl Streep is an excellent actress and seems to have found her funny side too, the only issue I had with the performance was that the “high-spirited” Julia seemed on drugs. First I thought she’s suffering from the Tourette Syndrome, the way she was speaking and moving. It looks like she’s not sick, not even on heavy drugs or too much Scotch (this was my second guess). So I do believe they could have toned it down, it’s almost clinical. Other than that, Tucci with Streep make a great team once again (it does seem like they got used to each other from the previous movie).

On the other hand we have Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who’s got a sinisterly boring job as a telephone call-taker in a cubicle, dealing with insurance questions after the tragic 9/11. She does feel she’s “really” a novelist, but was never able to actually finish something she’s started. So the project is to cook all the recipes from Julia’s book in one year time. And document this in a blog. 524 recipes in 365 days, all the cooking done in the evenings, when she’s coming home.

Though Paul (Julie‘s husband) is very supportive, Eric (Julie‘s husband) is getting annoyed after a while with her new passion. She does become utterly obsessed, forgetting than in the end it’s not such a huge deal. They live in a stinky apartment in a sordid house in Queens (NYC), one of those “all made of wood panels shacks” Americans like to call “houses” (in my country our houses are made from bricks and concrete – even the interior walls, so you can understand my opinion). Anyway, there are houses made “properly” in New York City too, but the 2 cannot afford rent in a better one. Interesting enough, she can afford all the groceries for her cooking undertaking.

The entire movie has its funny side, it’s very relaxing and a pleasant experience. Meryl Streep is adorable as usual, even if she seems high on something, while Amy Adams offers a cute version for the young chef-blogger. For such a Streep fan as I am, this is a “gotta see it” movie, but it’s a good one for you too. So, it’s totally recommended.