The Fighter reviewed by Tony Freitas

The Fighter - 
In Boxing & Hollywood Timing Is Everything

While August is the dumping ground for delayed films and low expectations, December in Los Angeles is the onslaught of awards contenders and critical darlings. After months of constipation, movie studios and distributers are finally shitting diamonds. Oscar hopefuls are dropping from the ether like manna from heaven to appease awards voters with short memories. This year's Golden Globe nominations in the Best Film Comedy or musical Category reads like the line-up at your local $2 discount theater - The Tourist, Alice in Wonderland, Red, Burlesque - and with the exception of "The Kids Are Alright" nary a one  seem to involve any other thought than what uber celebrities the Hollywood Foreign Press would like to see drink too much in the Beverly Hilton ballroom on January 16th. In the Bizarro World universe of the HFP, celebrity trumps taste once more.  

I'm getting to it here, in a round about way. That movie The Fighter. Speaking of The Golden Globes, last week a friend asked me if Mark Wahlberg is the new Pia Zadora.  At first I was totally lost. Then a dawning; it's the day, that day. Golden Globe nods. (Back in 1982 virtual unknown Pia Zadora was voted New Star of The Year by The Hollywood Foreign Press for the stateside unseen film Butterfly.  Kathleen Turner and Elizabeth McGovern were nominees in the same category. Critis everywhere were up in arms. That was pretty much the extent of Zadora's film career. A blank stare and sheer nightgowns can only get you so far.) Mark Wahlberg, I am informed, has been Golden Globe nominated for Best Actor in A Drama. I recall an earlier conversation with the same friend, months ago regarding Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones and the blank stare on Mark Wahlberg's face as he gazes out a window lost in thoughts of his missing, murdered daughter. He's suppose to be conveying something with that empty gaze, but there's nothing there, nothing in the eyes, nothing below the surface.  Peter Jackson replaced Ryan Gosling for this?  So the question is, is Mark Wahlberg the heir apparent to the Pia Zadora torch? Read on.  

The Fighter is the "based on a true story" story of welter weight boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg). His older brother Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) also a former welter weight contender (with a disputed knock down of Sugar Ray Leonard years earlier), is a full blown drug addict.  Despite his crack house blues, residents of Lowell MA. see Dickie as a local hero. If Dickie is "The Pride Of Lowell" then Micky is "The Silent Sufferer". Struggling as a junior welter weight boxer, a divorced weekend dad, Micky is trained by parasite brother Dickie while mother Alice (Melissa Leo) acts as Micky's booking manager. It's a family act all 'round. Or maybe more precisely a family circus. There's also the grotesque chorus line of Micky's sisters and half sisters, laying about, offering their unwanted two cents worth. With all that sturm und drang Micky's a bit of a cellophane man. He's a meal ticket and little else. Micky needs to find a way to cut the family loose if he's ever going to be a contender. And then along comes college drop-out bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), into Mickey's bed and head, filling him with notions and stuff. Maybe there's another way. Micky develops a voice. But does he have the balls to back it up, and cut the familial cord?


Director David O' Russell turns in a very workmanlike product.  The script credited to writers Scott Silver, Paul Tamsay and Eric Johnson is an uneven mix of family melodrama and traditional sports drama expectations. The film is divided  in two; The first two acts dealing with family crisis and the final act a rousing Rocky-esque crowd pleaser. There's nothing wrong with either, but here they seem glued together with the final third barely paying notice to what has transpired in the previous hour and twenty.

Bale is the standout performer. His Dickie Ward is a funny, frightening, pathetic mess, his wheels spinning in the glorious mire of his boxing days. He is the chaos that the other characters satellite around.  And Bale's transformation is not just physical.  His Dickie wears his heart on his sleeve and carries his pain around in a glass crack pipe. Oscar chances 100%.


Amy Adams fits nicely as potty mouthed bartender Charlene. Playing romantic second fiddle to the lead can be a thankless task, but Adams creates a memorable character from what could have been a by-the-numbers add-girlfriend-here role. 

Melissa Leo, so terrific in 2008's Frozen River, is solid as well. Her co-dependent relationship with son  Dickie feels authentic and pained. Once you get past the external - hair, nails, tight clothes - of Leo's Lowell Massachusetts matriarch, what lies beneath is motherly guilt and regret.


And then there's Mark Wahlberg, he of the thousand yard blank stare. Wahlberg is well suited to the role of Micky Ward. When he has the right vehicle and support (Boogie Nights, The Departed) he's just fine. That out-of-his-element quality serves him well sometimes. He doesn't reinvent the acting wheel here, but his constant low key demeanor, and soft spoken ways are a welcome contrast to the brash, loud and often cartoonish tumult swirling around him. Anymore histrionics and the film might implode. I rememeber Pia Zadora, and Mr. Wahlberg, you are no Pia Zadora.


Had The Fighter been released earlier in the year, before the "Oscar Season" I question whether it would have received as much attention and accolades. It's a gem in some ways, but not a diamond. Like Wahlberg, The Fighter is a prime example of well-timed Hollywood product placement. Just in time for Christmas. Just in time for academy voters.