How to use and avoid clichés at the same time

Rating: 8/10 (2 July 2012)

In a grim PIttsburgh town I feel like starting by saying Tommy used to work on the docks but he didn't, he's an ex-marine come home to try and get his life in order and maybe, try and patch things up with his abusive and recovering alcoholic estranged father, cut to Brandon, his brother who by contrast has a great life, seemingly, and a wonderful family. BUT, both of them have problems and the solution for both is to enter the same Mixed Martial Arts tournament for a five million dollar winner-takes-all prize where you kind of know exactly what's going to happen.
And that is the film's curse and yet also it's strength because in a way you want it to go the way it's going to go and yet somehow when it happens it feels like such a shock. The script is packed with cliché's and yet because the film-makers do them right they never feel like it, and yet strangely enough the thing that isn't cliché feels more obvious than what could have been the clichés.
The script and performances are top, some of the fights are brutal and yet others at times almost feel like they are not shot right, the story allows everything to get laid out in perfect clarity and yet it only takes up half of the film before they are at the tournament. Nick Nolte is top and Tom Hardy is his usual excellent self, although I have to say Kudos to Joel Edgerton for providing the emotional core of the film against such despair and desolation that alcoholism and domestic violence leave behind.
A fight film that is ultimately about family more than anything else, that which we are born with, that which we create and those that which we choose to call family and it's that which will have you in tears at the end.
A triumph.