Great boxing flick filled with excellent performances

Rating: 9/10 (20 April 2015)

So I watched another Oscar worthy performance this weekend in The Fighter, well several Oscar worthy actually but Christian Bale stood out in this movie, basically stealing every scene he was in.
How he manages to transform himself from one movie role to the next is just amazing. Here he plays a skinny, twitchy, toothless crack addict with a Boston accent.
The movie itself was really good too, I've always been a big fan of the boxing movies (blame Rocky) and this is the real life story of Irish" Mickey Ward and his trainer brother Dick Eklund on the rough streets of Lowell, Mass. Chronicling Mickey's struggle to emerge from the shadow of his half brother Dickey -a former champion who lost his career to crack addiction- and also his dysfunctional family, who cripple as much as support his aspiring boxing career.
A solid movie, albeit predictable, and filled with strong performances from Melissa Leo as the mother (what a piece of work) and Amy Adams as the girlfriend. Mark Wahlberg does a good job but does tend to get overshadowed. 9/16/15