A good movie, but unable to become anything better

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2011)

Despite seeing The Fighter just before Christmas, I never got around to writing a review. Unlike other Oscar hopefuls that I had seen and never reviewed, I sat down more than once to write my thoughts about Mark Wahlberg's passion project more than once. Except I could never bring myself to write any words. I would just sit and look at a blank document, trying to will myself to write and instead coming up with nothing. I had enjoyed the movie, but was something deeper holding me back from writing about it?
The Fighter revolves around the early half of Mickey Ward's (Wahlberg) boxing career. He has always been managed by his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) and trained by his crack-addicted older brother Dickie (Christian Bale), and never looked the other way to how things could be different if he had professionals helping him out instead. But after hooking up with a local bartender named Charlene (Amy Adams), and after a rather brutal match, Ward starts to look in another direction for his future.
While the movie may be called The Fighter, Ward's quest for redemption and a title shot are not the focus of the film until the last act of the film. It focuses more so on Ward's rather eccentric family unit (Alice had a number of children, not all with the same fathers), and focuses rather heavily on Dickie's battle with drugs and the subsequent HBO crew making the real life documentary High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell (which is dramatized and recreated here). And while these focus points are not necessarily a bad thing, they do take away from the subject of the film, and the real story at the heart of the film. It also causes a bit of misdirection – should we care more about Mickey, who should be the main character in the film, or do we focus more on Dickie or Alice? It never seems sure of itself until the final act, and until that point is a bit too jumpy with its focus.
But when the film is focused and on-track, it is rather creative in its editing and how it recreates real life events. While the whole movie has a hazy, washed out look to itself, the scenes involving actual boxing matches have noticeable grain, are more beaten and scratched up. They have been modified to the point of looking like we are watching an actual taped version of the real life match. The actual audio from the matches is even spliced into the mix, giving it an even more authentic feel. Much the same goes for the portions shown of the High on Crack Street documentary, looking more and more like the actual doc would have back in the mid 1990s. The film was misframed and noticeably softer in the theatre I saw it in, but the magic of these authentic elements was too well composed to not take notice.
But then authenticity seems to be what director David O'Russell was striving for here. He cast actual residents of Lowell, Massachusetts in roles in the film (not unlike Ben Affleck does in his Boston-set epics). One of Mickey's actual trainers, police sergeant Mickey O'Keefe, plays himself in the film. The film was partially filmed where it actually takes place. Everything about the film's creation keeps adding up, and it could not have just been Wahlberg's passion for the project that made it stay so authentic. And because the film is so unlike O'Russell's other projects (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings and the absolutely enigmatic and baffling I Heart Huckabees), the authenticity really stands out as something different and somewhat of a departure for the director and for a film like this. It easily could have been another Rocky or Raging Bull, but it made something of itself and brought some form of uniqueness to the genre.
Both Leo and Adams provide excellent performances as the two key female figures in Mickey's life. They both have just enough spunk and zest to bring these two spirited characters to life. They may yell a lot, and have more than one instance where they rant and swear at each other, but both hold their own against each other and everyone else on screen. They just have a presence that cannot be easily imitated, and no matter what emotion they are trying to bring out on-screen, you know that they are being as authentic as physically possible.
But they are both easily crushed by the power and magnetism of Bale. He is almost unrecognizable at first as the crack-addled Dickie, looking downright terrifying in some of his early scenes. We knew he was as method as they come from his work in films like The Machinist and Rescue Dawn, but he really puts it all on the line here. You will never once doubt his performance in any instance. You may become downright sickened because it is so realistic and horrific in how far he takes it. He is unmissable in this role, and if it does not get recognized by more than the critics' associations, than something is truly wrong with the system.
With that said however, it must be noted that our "lead" in the film is the weakest link. Wahlberg just cannot hold a candle to any of these three top form performers, and you can tell they are running circles around him. Sure, he is visibly putting in some effort, but it is not enough to even compare to how much better they are than he is. It is almost sad to note, but much like the film not focusing on his character, the camera does not seem to want to focus on the actor either. The Fighter is a good movie, but with that inherent flaw, it never seems able to make anything more for itself.
8/10.