Outstanding

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2011)

Gritty, real, the uplifting story of a blue collar hero. Lowell Massachusetts is the real setting for this movie, and its clapboard row houses and deserted mills are punctuated with corner stores and bars. This is where "Irish" Mickey Ward made his rise to boxing immortality. Plagued by personal demons and a oft misguided family including half brother Dickey Ecklund Ward, a once up and coming boxer who was known as "the pride of Lowell" and who's claim to fame is having knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. Ecklund now battles with drug addiction and criminal activity while making a poor attempt to act as brother Mickeys trainer. This is a real life Rocky, a movie to lift you up out of your seat and make you feel alive.