OK sports movie but overlong and doesn't deliver the story as it thinks it does (SPOILERS)

Rating: Null/10 (4 March 2012)

I came to watch Warrior knowing that the general opinion was that it was a superior sports movie but also that a lot of people seemed to have been taken by surprise by how good it was, both critics and audience. So, imagine my surprise to find that in my opinion we had a potentially really good sports movie that is rather hampered by a flawed attempt to be more than just two men in a cage hitting each other. The plot is fairly obvious but this is part of it being a genre film; two brothers from a broken home, long since separated from each other and also their now-sober father. Trained as fighters as children, the two are now a high-school teacher who turns back to MMA to earn enough to save his home from the bank, while the other is haunted by his past in the Marines.
If you do not already know that the two will meet in the final then I salute you and your lack of cynicism, but the majority of viewers will know this and this will only add to the sense of anticipation. In regards the fight scenes, they are brutal and engaging. I'm really not a fan of this activity and any attempts to watch it have left me cold, but this is shot really well, taking you right into the action with a sense of urgency and a sound design where you feel every impact. This is the reason that the second half of the film really gets going. Unfortunately when it is not focused on these conflicts, the film doesn't have the same impact. I can see the potential and i can understand that some loved the rather slow and mostly unspoken relationship backstory, but for me it was almost too slow, too unspoken and with too little in there to justify the approach. At times it gets close to being pretentious as it grinds out the clichés in an overly worthy fashion and doesn't provide the heart of the story despite having so much time to do so. Speaking of which, the film is painfully overlong and could easily have lost a good 20 minutes and been the better for it.
In terms of performances, the film is generally good. Hardy shows us what a good Bane he could be and he is impressive in his body and performance; I would have liked to have seen him have more to work with than he does, but he does a lot with looks and presence. Edgerton has more of a human face and as a result it is him that the viewer feels more for; he is good here, both in the ring and out of it despite most of his material being a cliché. Nolte is Oscar-nominated here and I will say I am surprised. He has good presence and he does seem to get his character and deliver a lot of pain, but I didn't think the film valued him as much as it could have done, as he does rather seem secondary to most of it. The three men do help make the film better than it could have been, but they all deserved more than the script gave them.
Warrior seems to be loved by the majority of viewers but for me it left me rather cold. The fights in the second half ramp up the drama and it does deliver as a solidly entertaining sports film, but the rest of it simply doesn't work as well as it should have done. The cast deserved better and, although they do a lot with their performances, the film moves too slowly and with too little impact any time the focus is on character and family. There is a lot of beef in this film for sure, but I was disappointed to find that there wasn't anywhere near enough meat.