Excellent for the genre

Rating: 8/10 (14 February 2011)

Many boxing films I have noticed get positive receptions and I enjoy so as you can imagine I had great optimism going into it. Micky Ward is not a household name but of course he doesn't need to be a household name for this to be a good film. The film itself was very good and the thing that impressed me was the pacing. I liked Raging Bull for example but I did believe there were problems with the pacing and sort of dragged. This film didn't and they kept it to a premium very well knowing what what was required and didn't in my view anyway have too much padding. All of the roles were played well, his sisters were portrayed in a very over the top way but I didn't begrudge it too much because they didn't have a huge amount of screen time for the characters they are.
Mark Wahlberg did a great job with the understated mild mannered performance which had us empathising with the character but not in a way that felt clichéd about the humble rags to riches character that of course we've all seen before. He does well overall but I am not the first to say this but Christian Bale really does steal the show. It is probably the film I've seen him perform the best in. He plays it brilliantly and doesn't go over the top like the sister characters seem to because he plays it that well. There is an element of tragedy about the character as we see about the HBO documentary about crack addiction. He even manages to have some amusing moments without coming across as too goofy. Knowing about the sort of performance Dicky demanded I thought he may get too goofy but he manages to have some slightly comedic moments as well as portraying a flawed individual as well. Inspite of his flaws I still like the character of Dicky which could have failed in the respect of him being the sort of individual he was at least in the film. I don't know how much they changed him if at all I'm only going by what I saw. It may sound like the film is all about him and its not we see plenty of Micky Ward and the way he likes to conduct himself which ultimately isn't underplayed. It was also done well in that we do not just see Micky as a punching bag (no pun intended) for these problems. Its not as if they're just saddling continuous hurdles on him which they could have done if they felt it made it more interesting. I notice sometimes filmmakers do this in order to make the story more compelling and I don't think they do that here. They keep it interesting and not cringe-worthy. The boxing scenes were decent but I have seen better boxing scenes from films before. These served their purpose well and didn't fail at attempting artsy techniques which I really could have imagined them doing. Is it the best boxing film of all time? Probably not but makes for a very good film on its own which served up good performances all round.