The Fighter is a feel good boxing movie with two major story lines that follows the lives of Dickey Eklund (Christian Bale) and Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg).

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2012)

The Fighter is a feel good boxing movie with two major story lines that follows the lives of Dickey Eklund (Christian Bale) and Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg). Dickey was a prominent fighter in his day only to succumb to crack cocaine. A HBO film crew follows Dickey around documenting his struggles with addiction and his fall from grace. As Dickey fights his demons, he trains his half-brother Micky as a fighter.
The film documents the struggles of a low-class family whose worlds depend on the success of Micky and his less than stellar boxing career. Micky struggles with the direction his family, mainly his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) who is his manager. After scheduling a fight that will appear on HBO, the opponent falls ill leaving Micky to take on a last minute opponent that was out of his weight class. The match resulted in a loss for Micky and a major beating leaving Micky to believe that his family does not have his best interests at heart. Micky meets his love interest Charlene (Amy Adams) who tries to help him steer his career in the direction that will get him to where he wants to be without the help of his family. Micky begins to see success in the ring with his new trainer and promoter. As Dickey gets himself clean after being in prison and returns to Micky's corner as his trainer, Micky gets his shot at a championship belt.
The use of TV cameras for the boxing matches, the emotions of the characters and the crowd, and the sound of the punches in the ring gave a realistic feel to the film and made the audience feel as if they were there watching the match. Unlike Rocky, whose boxing scenes where that of the actors playing a boxer, they never seem to draw you into the action like the director David Russell does with The Fighter where the boxing matches were raw and realistic. The TV camera footage added a gritty look to the film adding a cheap look that we get from old TV footage.
Though the movie was mainly about Micky's road to a boxing championship, the audience cannot forget about the story between Dickey and Micky who are trying to overcome life's obstacles in order to reach their mutual goal, that of being a boxing champion. The Fighter falls within a predictable pattern of family, love, obstacles and success. The Fighter was based on a true story so that alone draws the audience in. Adding in great actors, music score and an interesting story line and you have the makings of a good film.