A talented, uncouth redneck figure skater's fall from grace

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2018)

This biopic shows a series of interviews and dramatization of sometimes conflicting and unreliable accounts from the prominent people in the events surrounding Nancy Kerrigan's knee whacking in 1994. Robbie, Stan, Janney captures the essence of the characters they portray in this film. The various news clips and interviews of the real Tonya Harding and other personalities shown in the end credits serves as comparison to those said performances, and I got to say that the depictions really made those larger-than-life characters yet again larger than life.
Gillespie has profoundly presented Harding's life beset with hardships: of her and her mother's persistence in achieving mastery of figure skating at an early age and trying to fit (or not) to the expectations of a sophisticated sport, of her struggles in being a product of a broken home, of her volatile relationship with Gillooly, and of the insanity that surrounds the botched-up plan to scare her rival Kerrigan. The pst-modern approach that the director used in this film to handle the issues regarding the inconsistency with which we recount the events in the past, (I admit even I am sometimes guilty of that - Nobody's perfect). Not to mention the egotism in which people try to paint themselves a more pleasant, more agreeable version of the past to suits them or feeds them. And then there's those people who are just plain kooky.
Gillooly's meetings with his friend/self-proclaimed Harding bodyguard Eckhardt in that dreary strip club fancying himself as a criminal genius wannabe is quite a black comedy gold. The director superbly captured the cheesiness of the proceedings, and the resulting lunacy of having to rely on such buffoons in the first place to devise an idiotic out-of-this-world plan that went down in American pop culture history, of which he is amazingly immensely proud of orchestrating.
With the madness that have transpired that had her ending up as victim of a traumatic attack, there is no need for people to know Nancy Kerrigan's point-of-view or take in all of the fiasco. Not that her life isn't that interesting, it's just that boring for some people ain't palatable and Tonya Harding life is handing the all-consuming trashiness to the scandal-hungry public in spades.
Kerrigan and Harding's name are forever linked to each other, like marriage in tabloid heaven. Never shall Nancy's name will be mentioned and for people not to think of the other, a dilemma that is shared as well by Harding who still has protested her innocence regarding the incident. It's kind of a bummer for Kerrigan because that kind of undermines her career as a proficient skater, though to think about it, her name would not have been more resonant if she would have been only one of those Olympic figure skaters in America that come and gone. And Harding, in all fairness that she also deserves, she does not need that nasty publicity as well. She could have easily had a decent career being a product endorser or something for being the second female figure skater in the world to completely execute the triple axel in a major competition, nobody can take that away from her, a feat that hasn't been attempted since. Yet.
My rating: A-minus.