Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior looks like the latest entry into the pugilist genre, but its true theme is focused on the sublimation of violence. Admittedly, there are undercurrents of dysfunctional family tropes that ebb and flow throughout the rise of fighters and brothers Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan Conlon (Josh Edgerton). A rift in their teenage years separated the two: Brendan chose Tess (Jennifer Morrison), his highschool lover cum wife, while Tommy was left to take care of his dying mother. In tandem to this cliché is another: Tommy and Brendan are prodigal sons to their recovering alcoholic father, Paddy (Nick Nolte). Nolte gives the best performance in this film, though Hardy and Edgerton hold their own.
As Tommy returns from one of the wars in the Middle East, he is shocked to find that his father listens to Melville and Faulkner on audio tape, has found God, and no longer wants to “share a belt” with his son, and is “1000 days” clean. Admirable as this is, Paddy has still failed to reinvent himself and reframe his image in the eyes of either of his sons. Despite the presence of Brendan’s children and his wife in snap shot form on living room furniture, they are absent from Paddy’s life. And throughout, he is separated from both of his sons. When Brendan fights, Paddy watches him on a screen. He watches Tommy a few rows deep in the audience and through the chain-link cage. When he trains Tommy, which is hardly ever shown on screen, Tommy is in a ring, Paddy barks from the outside. Here, Nolte’s voice is as gruff as Burgess Meredith’s in Rocky, but there’s a vacant distance in his words. This is not a knock on a Nolte, but rather an observation of the malice within Tommy. Even though Tommy needs a trainer, his request feels more like a punishment, one that invited Paddy in and shuns him before he gets too close, prohibiting him from reaping the glory that Tommy might find in the ring.
The buildup to the finale is evident: Tommy fights because it is what is trained to do as a Marine, and violence is the only way that he stays sane. Brendan is a former UFC fighter, current high school physics teacher who is fired mid semester, and man on the verge of losing his house. Here, O’Connor introduces a condescending banker who shirks any responsibility for Brendan’s current “upside down mortgage,” citing that he merely gave Conlon options, of which he made the choices. I don’t hate the introduction of predatory lenders as villain, but it’s brief and hardly organic. Here, Warrior falls into the category of film that creates a villain that doesn’t really exist. Sure, predatory lenders exist and might be ethically gray, but Brendan and his wife are educated (he is a physics teacher after all), and they clearly could have read through the contract, crunched the numbers, and determined whether or not their decisions would have benefited them in the long run. Simply put, the scene garners sympathy, but I’m not sure how sympathetic I am for the Conlon’s. In part, this is also buttressed by the focus both Brendan and Tess put on their “house” and the way in which Brendan ignores the budget they set in order to spoil one of his children on her birthday. I completely understand the his children are his life, but his irresponsibility doesn’t cultivate sympathy; rather, it makes me wonder why he was never required to attend a fiscal literacy class in college.
Regardless, the most fascinating part of Warrior is the repeated phrase the signals the beginning of each round of Sparta, the $5million, winner-take-all, “biggest MMA tournament in history”: “let’s go to war!” The referee claps his black-latex-gloved hands, and the fighting commences, but this line in itself is significant in that the confrontations, while violence, and the antithesis of war. We are privy to brief flashes of Tommy’s time overseas and the story of how he was the sole survivor or a friendly-fire attack, and how he saves an entire troop that was going to drown by ripping the door off of a tank. His power is made evident, but their deaths would have been imminent had he been weaker. Their deaths would not have been prevented by a referee pulling off the attacker. In the ring, the violence is sanctioned and, even when ostensibly brutal and bloody, controlled. The moment a fighter loses consciousness, the attacker is removed, the fight ends, and medics are called. On most occasions in the ring against Tommy, his opponents are knocked unconscious and probably concussed, but they all leave the ring alive.
The referee’s phrase is repeated more and more on camera as the tournament progresses. Simultaneously, the value of “war” loses meaning: the audience cheers on the brutality and violence, Tommy’s Marine Corps appears in the stadium to cheer him on, as if they too have been desensitized to the realities of “war.” There are moments that O’Connor attempts to paint their support as a testament to Tommy’s heroics overseas, but this is often overshadowed. Perhaps he’s aware of this; perhaps he isn’t.
One reason why it might be the latter is the improbability of the final fight between Brendan and Tommy. Without giving away the victor, I’ll just note that the story becomes a bit sloppy. The previous rounds proceeded as such: Tommy’s road is made simple. His matches last about ten seconds a piece. Brendan’s path is a bit rockier, going a few rounds each, and often resulting in his placing a submission hold on his opponent. However, Tommy seems unable to take down his brother. Really, it seems as if he doesn’t want to, but there’s no reason for him not to want to. A previous encounter on the New Jersey shore illustrates the resentment that Tommy has toward Brendan. Perhaps Tommy just wants to toy with his brother, but it doesn’t feel this way. It feels like he wants to beat him, but simply can’t; however, according to the preceding narrative, there’s no reason why he can’t.
