{"id":9813,"date":"2024-12-10T17:45:06","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T22:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9813"},"modified":"2024-12-10T17:45:06","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T22:45:06","slug":"the-fighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-fighter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fighter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Fighter <\/strong>(2010)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, drug content, some violence, sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David O. Russell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Scott Silver, Paul Tamsay and Eric Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Brook\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 10, 2010 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Mickey O’Keefe, Jack McGee, Melissa McMeekin, Bianca Hunter, Erica McDermott, Jill Quigg, Dendrie Taylor, Kate O\u2019Brien, Jenna Lamia, Frank Renzulli, Paul Campbell, Caitlin Dwyer, Chanty Sok, Ted Arcidi, Ross Bickell, Sean Malone, Jose Antonio Rivera, Alison Folland, Sean Patrick Doherty, Sugar Ray Leonard.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $93.6M (US)\/$129.1M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Okay, I\u2019ll say it even though I hate to resort to clich\u00e9s. The Fighter<\/strong> is a first-round KO! It was a most unexpected outcome. I walked into it expecting yet another formulaic underdog sports drama in which some low-level boxer gets a shot at the title. I\u2019m pleased to report The Fighter is NOT a subpar Rocky knock-off. On the contrary, it\u2019s the best boxing movie I\u2019ve seen since Raging Bull.<\/p>\n

In addition to a riveting sports tale, The Fighter<\/strong> is an engrossing personal drama centered on two brothers from a large, loud Irish-American family in the working-class burg of Lowell, MA. Boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg, Invincible) is what you call a \u201cstepping stone\u201d meaning he typically fights up-and-coming boxers looking for an easy win on their way up. His older brother Dicky (Bale, The Dark Knight) is his trainer; that is, when he\u2019s not off somewhere getting high on crack. A former boxer himself, his claim to fame is knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard during a 1978 match. Cameras follow him around town filming him for an HBO documentary* he thinks is about his comeback. It\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Micky\u2019s brassy mother Alice (Leo, Frozen River) is his manager. Although she\u2019s been doing it for years, she\u2019s not very good at her job. If anything, she\u2019s holding Micky back. An undercard fight in Atlantic City becomes a humiliating defeat for Micky after she and Dicky encourage the welterweight to fight a last-minute replacement, a heavyweight who outweighs him by 20 lbs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The catalyst for change is Micky getting his hand broken by cops while trying to protect Dicky from a beating while being arrested. He decides to wash his hands of his brother once and for all. With some encouragement from his girlfriend Charlene (Adams, Julie & Julia), he signs on with a new manager (Renzulli, Broadway Danny Rose) who agrees to represent him only if he keeps his brother and mother out of it. With his father (McGee, Lethal Weapon 2) and new trainer Mickey O\u2019Keefe (playing himself) in his corner, he starts winning fights eventually earning a shot at the welterweight title.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll concede that The Fighter<\/strong> is somewhat predictable with an ending that\u2019s never in doubt. That doesn\u2019t make it any less powerful or exciting. Director David O. Russell (Three Kings) imbues the proceedings with gritty street realism and naturalistic settings. It gets pretty intense with Micky\u2019s family, a sizable clan that includes seven loud sisters, all of whom believe they have their baby brother\u2019s best interests at heart. Alice and her girls take as instant dislike to Charlene who isn\u2019t afraid to speak her mind when it comes to her fellow. She has to; he\u2019s afraid to speak out against them because they\u2019re family. That is Micky\u2019s tragic flaw, his loyalty to his incredibly dysfunctional family, his mom and brother in particular. He has to make a difficult but obvious choice. The thing about Alice is that there\u2019s real love (with an undercurrent of self-serving) behind everything she does. At the end of the day, she just wants to hold her family together in the face of rough circumstances, mostly brought on by Dicky\u2019s drug use. One of the film\u2019s major accomplishments is showing the effects of addiction on the user\u2019s family. To Russell\u2019s credit, he doesn\u2019t turn The Fighter<\/strong> into an anti-drug PSA.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Russell, working from a punchy script by Scott Silver, Paul Tamsay and Eric Johnson, manages the tricky feat of eliciting captivating performances from all four leads. Bale and Leo deservedly won Oscars (Actor and Actress, Supporting) for their work. Bale completely inhabits his character\u2019s tics and mannerisms while Leo flawlessly portrays a fiercely protective mother prone to violent fits of anger when she feels betrayed. Wahlberg continues to grow as an actor with an incredible performance as Micky. It\u2019s getting easier to forget he was rapper Marky Mark (of the Funky Bunch) once upon a time in the early 90s. His muscular physique, the result of four years of training for the role, certainly helps. Adams steps out of her comfort zone to play Charlene, a college dropout working as a bartender. She takes crap from NOBODY. When the sisters show up at her house looking for a fight, she gives them one. The Fighter<\/strong> is definitely an acting tour de force.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The fight scenes in The Fighter<\/strong> are especially well done. They should be, they were handled by the same director and crew that filmed the real-life fights for HBO. They really give the film a sense of excitement. You know, I can\u2019t think of a single thing wrong with The Fighter<\/strong>. It\u2019s an outstanding film on every conceivable level. It\u2019s a little on the heavy side, but it\u2019s completely rewarding in the end.<\/p>\n

* = \u201cCrack in America\u201d aired in \u201995.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fighter (2010)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, drug content, some violence, sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David O. Russell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Scott Silver, Paul Tamsay and Eric Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Brook\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 10, 2010 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Mickey O’Keefe, Jack McGee, Melissa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Fighter-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9813"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10056,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813\/revisions\/10056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}