Nearly Perfect

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2017)

I was 18 years old when this all went down and the thing I thought about was "who cares, it's ice skating?" and "I'll jerk it to Nancy Kerrigan, she's hot...and the crying makes it better."
Yes, that is the history of "the incident" where Tonya Harding, supposedly desperately wanted to be in the Olympics so bad, she supposedly coordinated the attack on Kerrigan.
This sort of resentment exists in anything where talent and skill are in full display. The same could be said about filmmakers. One loves to throw shade on each other. But there still exists a mutual respect. That it was even made. The resentment, no doubt, boils within the person. I'm victim to it. Others are as well, but it's never voiced as openly as "I,Tonya."
There is no way in Hell director Craig Gillespie didn't study "GoodFellas" when making this movie. It is the embodiment of that style to the exact whip pans and breaking the fourth wall. And he nails it! Like Tonya Harding's triple axel. Without even the story of Harding versus Kerrigan...it's still a fucking fun movie. There is so much energy and dark humor. This is the movie "Three Billboards..." desperately wants to be. Because the darkness to the humor is earned and doesn't have contrived brutality to make you believe it. In fact, there is a moment when she addresses us directly and accuses us of...well, it's all true, which sucked the air out of the theater. That is amazing filmmaking.
The performance of Tonya by Margot Robbie is a little bit caricature of the person. Though I think she walks a fine line. It's so razor thin and she does it so effortlessly. Like a perpetually dumb teenager who listens to "New Kids On The Block" it isn't a spoof. And that's the hard part about the movie. That she plays a notorious bad girl without playing it for laughs. She just...is. It sometimes is heartbreaking. And Sebastian Stan who plays Jeff Gillooly, whom I thought a buffoon back in the early 90's was a brutal guy. Never did we once believe he would end up killing Harding, but you get the feeling it was only a matter of time. The wild relationship they had almost excused it for love.
The trophy definitely goes to Allison Janney as her mother LaVona Golden. An unrepentant white trash Mom-ster who is either a stage mother or a wicked step-mother. Her physical attacks on Harding seem so effortless it's the shocking part of the movie. Like after so many attacks, it became normal. She should win the Oscar for Supporting Actress (though probably not because it's an awful mean person).
How do you make a film about someone everyone knows more about than you? This is the answer. Take the key players names out of the film, and you still have a fascinating film about the ruthlessness of the ice skating world (not much different than the beauty pageant). People also forget that Tonya Harding was the first American woman to landed a triple axel. Yes, folks, the only American woman who had the balls to do it. If she's chippy about her legacy, she deserves to be.