For the second time in two weeks, I will do my best to avoid puns during this post, particularly the ubiquitously uncreative “knockout” that has been used in most every review whether it be about Mark Wahlberg’s performance (really) or most often Chistian Bale’s.
For starters, The Fighter could have been terrible, and there were so many times that I was ready to slap my palm to my forehead, ready to breathe deeply through flashbacks of Rocky V or some other lesser boxing movie, like Rocky III or IV. I know a number of people who credit Rocky IV as a film that brought an end to the Cold War and helped open relations between the United States and Russia, but the truth is, IV only perpetuated Dolph Lungren’s career, and that’s just uncalled for. While it didn’t last much longer, there are moments from Master’s of the Universe that I wish my child eyes had not seen.
Regardless of my feeling about the quadruplet of later Rocky films, the original is still classic, and like the most critically revered boxing films, centers on a character who fights to legitimize himself – or herself in the case of Million Dollar Baby. And, maybe this is the reason why critics and moviegoers alike are enamored with boxing films. They give us a pure mano y mano situation, one in which the winner doesn’t just walk away with a sum of money, but inner pride as well as admiration. And typically, these boxers are pre-relegated to underdog, a trope that we can all connect with at some point in our lives. Unfortunately this wealth of classic and critically acclaimed boxing films had the potential to set The Fighter up for a fall (I don’t consider this a boxing pun, so let’s just move forward), primarily because the lead is not a multiple Oscar winner like Daniel Day Lewis (The Boxer) or Hillary Swank (Million Dollar Baby). Instead, Mark Wahlberg is the lead, and while his body is certainly crafted like a fighter and he ostensibly fits the role, every time I see his name, I go to The Happening, and the numerous lines he delivered with interrogative inflections – even if they were statements.
{Note: Even Wahlberg has now realized his folly of being in The Happening: Source: slashfilm.com}
However, Wahlberg is subdued in this film, something that I’ve rarely seen from him. Most of the time – even in his Oscar-nominated turn in The Departed — he plays a rather boisterous, hot-headed character. While it is sometimes amusing, his quietness in The Fighter is refreshing, which also establishes another difference between The Fighter and the aforementioned boxing films. As opposed to being a man fighting solely for himself, Micky “Irish” Ward fights for nearly everyone else in his life: his mother and her brood of step-half-illegitimate daughters, his crackhead brother / former boxer Dickie Englund (Christian Bale), and the rest of Lowell, a town whose claim to fame is that previously mentioned Englund once knocked down Sugar Ray – or did he slip?
Instead of weaving another tale about individual success, The Fighter limns this thin line between the impediments of family but the function of them in success, which is rather disparate from say Million Dollar Baby where Fitzgerald’s family consists of an ex-con, a teenage mother of half-a-dozen who lies on her welfare forms, and an obese mother who tries to extort her quadriplegic daughter. While I enjoy Million Dollar Baby, The Fighter’s novel approach to the boxing genre – in a sense – does what Unforgiven did to the Western in 1992: gave it a new angle, one where the protagonist is a relatable villain and the guy maintaining order in an orderless era is vilified. Here, The Fighter uses Ward as a salvific vehicle for everyone in his corner (literal corner, not figurative; thus, no pun here), not just for personal redemption. Honestly, Ward is never redeemed because he doesn’t fall.
Dickie Englund could have also sunk this film. Not Christian Bale, but the portrayal itself by a less-skilled actor. Englund is a former professional boxer who had momentary success, but was ultimately a stepping stool for other boxers. As we see him now, he is a frequent prison guest, receiving howls and cheers as he walks across the prison yard in what seems to be rather routine; he is a crack addict who is being followed by HBO documentary films for which he believes they are filming his comeback, though the director says in front of Dickie that they are shooting a documentary on crack addiction in America.
That said, so many drug movies devolve to silliness because the junkie’s mannerisms are so highly exaggerated that the entire performance becomes hyperbolic like Stiller’s portrayal of Jerry Stahl in Permanent Midnight or Val Kilmer in The Doors. While those movies aren’t terrible, at times, the characters become less human and more cartoonish as if you were watching contemporary versions of Reefer Madness. In The Fighter, Bale slow-plays this character, and while Dickie is twitchy, his maneurisms are focused. He doesn’t flail about uncontrolled. Instead, he fidgets with his pant legs, making sure the pleats are in line – or as in line as they appear to a junkie, thus, the constant straightening. He constantly moves his upper body, partly to show us his innate need to be a boxer, but also to show us that he is trying to portray himself as normal. Each twitch makes the audience uncomfortable, but Dickie is always real, never devolving to a caricature that illustrates the dangers of drug use.
Like Bale, Amy Adams gives a worthy performance, and like Bale, will definitely garner an Oscar nomination. While Bale is a sure-fire bet to win, Adams may have other competition, though it seems she’s due after her turns in Proof, Sunshine Cleaning, and Junebug. Academy politics aside, Adams’ performance is also controlled. She functions as the scissors that nick the cord between Ward and his mother/manager with gang of step-half-blood (?) sisters in tow. But like, Englund, Charlene (Adams) could have been completely overdone – instead, it was just mildly overdone, but I think this has less to do with Adams and more to do with the script.
Which, bring us to my only gripe about The Fighter – not one that kills the movie for me, but one that seems a bit too forced. There is so much drama between the mother and Micky and Micky and Dicky that manufacturing a feud between Micky’s six sisters, who pile out of the mother’s station wagon like white trash clowns, seems a bit unnecessary. Granted, this conflict establishes the “blood is thicker than water” cliché, and that they are heavily protective of Micky and their mother’s position as his manager, but this was already established when Micky bring Charlene over to the house and all six of his sisters sit on one couch, stare her down, and start calling her “MTV girl,” whatever that means. A few scenes later, the sisters and mother pile into the aforementioned station wagon and arrive at Charlene’s house, calling her outside and getting into a less-than-sexy female rumble on the porch.
Don’t get me wrong. I kind of enjoyed seeing Adams kick some ass, breaking a nose or two and swearing at a bunch of troglodytes, but I’m not sure it was necessary. Nor was the overuse of the Massachusetts accent and the moniker “Gawbage” or “Junkbag.” It was at this point that I felt like I was watching the South Park parody of The Jersey Shore in which everyone is “Cabbage.”
Despite the White Trash Rumble, The Fighter is carried on the shoulders of its cast, and despite the mother/manager’s involvement in the White Trash Rumble, Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) does a fine job not crossing into cartoon land as well. She yells, and she screams, but her love for Micky, and most endearingly her loving ignorance to Dickie’s addiction, comes across as genuine. You feel sorry for her. Not because of what Dickie is, but of how she is trying to build him back up as any mother would.
DYL MAG Score: 8
