Awestruck

Rating: 9/10 (16 September 2011)

Awestruck Expected a good movie, got much more! Many blanks in storyline filled in so well with little dialog. Movie progresses without a pause, pulls you in on all levels. Emotions kept in check by the actors, run rampant throughout the audience. Movie is neither a "Rocky" nor a "Raging Bull," but more like the "The Great Santini" on emotional steroids. It tears at your heart and mind beginning to end! Nick Nolte seems out of his element and somewhat awkward, until his drunken scene hits a grand slam with the unleashing of unsaid demons sequestered in Hell for so long. Facial and body expressions painted under a veil of what seems a still frame filled with only the sounds of ones thoughts, brings a forceful turning point of a dysfunctional father and son (Tom Hardy) to accept and grant absolution in a confessional of a surprising embrace.
The pièce de résistance is the powerful closing forcing the brothers (Hardy and Joel Edgerton) to confront the collision of love and hate in confines of a no win way-out. Superlatively carved out in graphic imagery, both the path and pain towards salvation is unmatched in modern film. As the brothers walk from the ring, the 1969 song "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" by The Hollies most vividly comes to mind.