The Awkward Child of "Raging Bull" and "Rocky"

Rating: 3/10 (30 March 2012)

For a film about a champion boxer, Mickey Ward, the boxer in question, is the weakest character in the entire film. It is the supporting cast who hold this film up on two legs, and it's ninety minutes of them bickering and thirty minutes of anything else happening. This film is horrifically unambitious, taking the actual story, and molding it over the forms set forth by "Raging Bull" and "Rocky" before it. Sports movies have a fairly general array of stories, but "Rocky" did it best for a boxing film. "Raging Bull" is less boxing film and more biopic, focusing on a general set of points regarding one's life, and it set the standard. "The Fighter" is half-and-half. Its story is that of a boxing film, but its focus is on its characters, except Mickey Ward, whom I thought was the main focus of the film. So you sit through two hours of Christian Bale smoking crack and Amy Adams and Melissa Leo fighting, and that's it. Then there's a brief training montage and WHOO!! Mickey Ward won the Welterweight Title. Awesome. Too bad the filmmakers neglected every step it took to actual make him an empathetic character. Come on, David O Russell, his childhood was probably relevant. Show him growing up, being put down, how he developed into the sad sack he became, because it is so much more relevant to Mickey Ward, for he lacks the emotional issues of Jake La Motta and the approachable earnestness of Rocky Balboa. I don't care if his BROTHER was a crack addict or his MOTHER was a nightmarish fiend of a woman, what I care about, or want to care about, is HIM.