The Story Of Mickey Ward

Rating: 4/10 (2 February 2011)

As any movie of this type has to do, it finally draws you into the protagonist's situation and gets you rooting for him. In this case the protagonist is real-life boxer Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) who has to overcome big odds - not the least of which is an extremely dysfunctional family headed up by his controlling mother Alice (Melissa Leo) and his drug addict brother Dicky (Christian Bale) who used to be a boxer and who's claim to fame was knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard (or did Sugar Ray slip?) and who now wants to live his dream through his brother. I appreciated the fact that Sugar Ray appeared as himself in a couple of brief scenes. By the time Mickey gets his title shot you are rooting for him, and you do admire his strength in overcoming the challenges he's faced. The actual title shot, mind you, struck me as a bit anti- climactic to be honest. It was pretty quickly portrayed and frankly the whole thing ultimately left me a bit empty, although I was satisfied to see Mickey become the champ.
For three-quarters of the movie, though, the focus is really on the dysfunctional family relationship, and the challenge presented to that relationship by the sudden appearance of Charlene (Amy Adams) - a local bartender and college dropout who hooks up with Mickey and pushes him to escape his family's controlling influence. This was a good performance from Adams. I found her the most interesting of the cast, because she was playing a character very different from the usual cute and sweet roles I've seen her in, and so she demonstrated a versatility I hadn't seen from her before. Wahlberg and Bale were all right, but I didn't find anything especially noteworthy about their performances.
In the end, the biggest weakness of this movie was that it really failed to draw me in until the title fight (and to an extent the fight that led up to the title fight.) I was bored frankly by the family, who struck me as a sort of Massachussetts version of "white trash" and who weren't really all that interesting. I can't imagine growing up with those sisters. Mickey deserves credit just for not punching any of them out. This really didn't do a great deal for me. It offers about half an hour that really intensely interested me, which fizzled out in a truly too abrupt ending and focused mostly on an unappealing family.