MFields Review: The Fighter

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2011)

I was a little late seeing this one, but I really wanted to catch in the theater. Something told me that this is one that I should see at the theater and boy was I right. I enjoyed the heck out of this film, which begs the question, has there ever been a bad boxing movie? I'm sure there is, but most of the ones I've seen were decent to great.
The Fighter follows Marky Mark playing Mickey, and his crackhead, former boxer brother Dickey (played wonderfully by Christian Bale) in the poor side of town with a family investing in Marky Mickey to compete in these boxing matches. The mother especially (played wonderfully by Melissa Leo), as she acts like Marky Mickey's manager. Dickey, being that he was a former boxer and took down Sugar Ray Leonard, is Marky Mickey's trainer. The problem is that Dickey smokes too much crack, and is often late showing up for training. Not only that, but he's destructive, and often finds himself getting into trouble with the police, and because of this people don't take kindly to Dickey and are trying to sway Marky Mickey away from him.
Along the way, Marky Mickey meets a beautiful bartender named Charlene (Amy Adams, delivering a great performance and made herself into a very interesting character)and after a brawl with Marky Mickey's family, she supports Marky Mickey's choice into breaking away from that family, especially after a boxing match gone bad, and it really becomes a struggle. This becomes the center of the movie as Marky Mickey tries to cope with the struggles with his family, his relationship, and his determination to make it to the top.
This is a wonderful movie. It's well written, well acted, well told, well directed, and just an all around great movie. It's one of those movies where I sat enjoying it from beginning to the end. Some movies I just sit there and wonder if this movie is going to get better. I never got that. It was great right from the beginning. There were a lot of scenes where I felt like I was watching real people. I felt like I met these people before, especially the mother. I've seen mothers like that before. Then there's Christian Bale, who like Heath Ledger, I got lost into his performance and even forgot that this guy played Batman!
The only gripe about this movie is the ending. For some reason I just wasn't satisfied enough with the outcome. It felt like it came out of nowhere. I don't know if that happened in real life or not, but it felt a tad abrupt. Also I wanted to see more of the ending than just texts telling us about where they are now. I would be satisfied with one more epilogue scene just to see what happened after the big fight.
The Fighter is a movie not to be missed. I highly recommend seeing this movie. However, even though David O. Russell is responsible for this wonderful movie, it doesn't give him a free pass. He can still screw up his upcoming project, Uncharted. I just hope he doesn't.