A movie for those who don't even like boxing!

Rating: 8/10 (23 April 2012)

I watched this movie against my will and was pleasantly surprised. I am not a big boxing fan and I truly expected to be bored. I wasn't. The movie is based on a true story and is about a young boxer, "Irish" Micky Ward (played by Mark Wahlberg), and how he got his acceptance into the boxing community. His older half-brother, Dicky Eklund (played by Christian Bale) was a retired boxer who had slipped into a life of drugs. Dicky was training Micky and he had taught him everything he knew, but the drugs made him unreliable. Micky's mom, Alice Ward (played by Melissa Leo) was his manager and Micky was losing most of his fights. Dicky gets incarcerated and gets clean. While Dicky is in jail, Micky gets a new manager and trainer and he starts winning fights. The main theme of the movie is to never give up. Another is family is important; and finally – drugs are bad. When Dicky gets released he is shunned by the new training team but Micky insists on wanting his brother back on the team. With them all working together, Micky can focus and he goes on to win the title. I am a fan of both Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg. At first I was appalled at Christian's acting, but in the credits the "real" Dicky is shown and he proves that Christian was actually pretty "spot on." Christian's gaunt drug-user look was fascinating to me because I had never seen him that thin. Mark on the other hand obviously had a lot of training for the movie as his physique was remarkable (no pun intended). It's a "rags to riches" story, much like "Rocky". The angles of the fighting shots; as well as them being shot in slow motion, really grab the viewer. I commend the actors for taking actual hits because they really looked like they hurt. Micky had a lot of things going against him; finances, lack of direction, and losing his "hero" to drugs. Micky never gave up; not on himself, or on his brother. He went on to win, but was still humble, a good sport, and thankful for what he got.