A pleasant surprise, with great performances all round

Rating: 8/10 (22 February 2011)

Long in the development pipeline, and long something of a labour of love for actor Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter arrives just before Awards season, depicting a often-told story about overcoming obstacles to reach your dream. Wahlberg, who takes centre stage as Irish-American welterweight boxer Mickey Ward, spent four years bulking himself up for the part and learning to fight like a professional fighter. You have to admire his dedication, as his performance and the film itself is surprisingly excellent. After all, this story has already been told in the form of Rocky, although that was told with a more fairytale edge. The Fighter is grounded in a very miserable reality, where poverty and crack-addiction is rife.
Trained by his former-professional boxer half-brother Dickie (Christian Bale), Mickey is going from fight to fight making little money and usually getting his arse handed to him. He is what is known in the boxing world as a 'stepping stone' - someone to knock out the way just before your big shot. Things aren't helped by the fact that Dickie is an unreliable crack-head, and his manager mother, is selfish and only sees what would be beneficial to her family, rather than Mickey's career. Mickey O'Keefe, a policeman and Mickey's co-trainer, believes him to be a formidable fighter, trying to do the right thing while his family keep messing things up. When Dickie is arrested and is jailed for a long stint, Mickey quits boxing and shacks up with feisty bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), much to his mother's and his seven sister's dismay. When an opportunity presents itself, Mickey must decide what is right and consider stepping back into the ring and fulfil his potential.
So far, so cliché, you may think. And you would be right to think that too, as the film does tick all the boxes. Yet it has never been done with so much dedication and heart, and this pours onto the screen for us to see. It's a film of (excuse the pun) knockout (sorry!) performances by a highly talented cast. The critics have raved about him, yet the Awards panels have failed to recognise Mark Wahlberg's restrained performance as the shy, quiet Mickey. He holds the film together as it's a film that needs a central character that you can truly root for, and Wahlberg nails it. Perhaps because it is a less showy performance than the other actors, but Wahlberg can stand tall after this, capturing the standard of acting that we have seen previously in Boogie Nights and The Yards. It is Christian Bale, however, that is scooping up the awards, and has received an Oscar nomination for his painful depiction of drug- addled Dickie Eklund. It is a fine showcase for possibly the finest actor around at the moment, and you can only sit back in awe at his complete dedication to his craft. He apparently stayed in character throughout shooting, and he lost a lot of weight to portray the decimation of Dickie's addiction. Of course, he's done this before in The Machinist, but here his acting overshadows the physical attributes.
The downside to the film is it's clichés, but I was so completely engrossed in the story and the characters that I just didn't care. It is difficult for the sports genre as a whole, as their is always something that has been done before. The better sports films of the last few years - Friday Night Lights, Million Dollar Baby, The Wrestler - also had to sacrifice originality for the sake of telling a good story, and it's the same here. Kudos, though, for director David O. Russell (who directed the fantastic Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees - both containing great Wahlberg performances) who takes an unfussy, no-nonsense approach. During the dramatic scenes, he simply points the camera and allows his actors to act, and the story to be told. He changes this, however, during the slightly disappointing boxing scenes, which are clearly influenced by Scorsese's Raging Bull, but lacking the magic and artistic flair of the 1980 classic.
Although it's never going to win the Best Picture Oscar, it is a worthy contender, much like it's protagonist. I hope Bale will received the award he so thoroughly deserves, and Wahlberg will realise he's not an action star, but a very good actor. A very pleasant surprise.
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