Two Brothers

Rating: Null/10 (25 February 2017)

On the rise to fame and success, a young boxer must decide whether to continue training with his family or seek professional training and management elsewhere in this sports drama based on true events. Mark Wahlberg is solid as the conflicted boxer in question and Amy Adams does well cast-against-type as his foul-mouthed bartender girlfriend, but is Christian Bale who steals every scene he is in as Wahlberg's older brother. A former boxing legend himself, Bale has delusions of grandeur and believes that the TV crew who have recently arrived to film him are making a documentary about his long awaited comeback when in reality they are making a film about his descent into heroine addiction. The overall film fascinatingly follows this structure too, opening with a lot of focus on Bale, only for Wahlberg to be eventually revealed as the true star (what a great metaphor for Bale's character coming to realise that not everything is about him). Melissa Leo also gets quite a bit of screen time as the brothers' overbearing mother, however, the rest of the family are disappointingly barely fleshed out all, including Jack McGee as Wahlberg's father, who could have been quite interesting given that he actually sides with Adams about his son's career. As for the sisters, they are all interchangeable stereotypes. This is, however, principally a film about the brothers and their every interaction is compelling. The end credits are also worth watching here for appearances by the brothers whose lives the film was based on - Dicky and Micky Ward.