Shift In Focus

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2011)

A film that was designed to be the story of Mickey Ward suffers from a shift of focus from the main character to the co-main character and everyone else who is in a scene with Marky Mark. That is a polite way of saying that Bale completely overshadows Mark Walberg. This was Mark's best chance of his career to make a statement and he missed it. He portrays Ward as a passive, one-dimensional person but that's not the worst bit.
I didn't like DeNiro in Raging Bull but at least LaMotta was portrayed as a man's man. Walberg portrays Ward as a dare i say , a coward? Or the p word? Certainly not out of the question. His technique is good as is his naturalism , but his choices is what makes his performance weak. Both DeNiro and Walberg fell into the trap of watching On The Waterfront and their imitation or rather failure to mix the masculine and the feminine just doesn't make a performance. Where at the end of Raging Bull i am left with respect for Jake Lamotta , at the end of this i was like , so is Micky Ward like a cry baby coward?
With the main character not drawing us in , that task is unnaturally transfered to the co-stars who absolutely steal the show. Ward's mother, played brilliantly , dare i say phenomenally, by Melissa Leo and Dicky,played by Christian Bale completely steal the show. I have never been a fan of Bale but he has been steadily growing in his naturalness and choices, although to be fair this performance does not feature much theatrical control and is rather unrestrained. It fits the role of a crack head well, but the point stands. Dicky , unlike Mickey also has a character arc and Bale really shines later on when he gets clean. I think it's time to give Christian some sort of award because unlike The Machinist which was of poor technique , this is the first performance of his career that features a very solid, borderline on brilliant, technique. About time , considering how many movies he's made so far. Di Caprio finally has a rival.
Amy Adams who i first watched in Doubt and who made me tired of her eternally- intense-to-the-point-of-bursting-for-no-reason-eyes does it here again , carrying large amounts of energy for absolutely no reason. She feels out of place and the one flaw in the story is the lack of justification for her actions from the script , since the actress can't deliver that on her own. She reminded me a bit of Marisa Tomei in the Wrestler , that tough , almost ghetto chick who is , well , tough and not much else. Adams plays a hard bartender really well , really well, but the rest of her role sometimes doesn't make sense as her motivations remain totally unclear, apart from one line that mentions her failure at college. But one line is not enough.
The director David Russell whom i only knew as the director of Three Kings delivers a film that portrays a way of life instead of a story of a person and in that it is reminiscent of a Scorsese movie, but not in any way stealing or plagiarizing. The pacing and editing are simply textbook and all film makers of today need to see The Fighter as a lesson on how to pace a film and also how to construct a scene where there are many points of action happening. It's not crafted with symbolism as The Godfather and the cinematography isn't poetic , this is a gritty, reality based movie with , again , very close to perfect pace. The cherry on top of the very strong story is the hilarious use of humorous moments as comic relief that work really , really well.
The action scenes, or more accurately , the boxing scenes are incredible. Walberg behaves like a real boxer in the ring and that is very , very impressive from an actor , similar to Rourke behaving like a real wrestler in that movie. Whereas DeNiro's boxing scenes in Bull were stylized, these are anything but , they are straight from a boxing broadcast and look amazing. I shouted out in astonishment when Ward knocked out his opponent with a body shot after losing , as if i were really watching a boxing match. Half the audience started clapping at that moment.
All in all it is a sublime piece of cinematic work , but unfortunately a case of the supporting cast overshadowing the main character and all the negative effects that follow from that. It is really a flaw that the movie can't quite recover from , because it was deemed a character piece, but the slight lean toward the portrayal of a way of life , a la Scorsese , and the powerful , earth shattering supporting cast (every single one of them, from the trainer cop to the nightmarish sisters to the mother , to the father , EVERYONE) make a decent attempt to save it. Terry Malloy , nobody can touch you.
8.3/10