I Was Totally Sucker Punched

Rating: 8/10 (3 February 2012)

The only thing "Warrior" could have added to make its shamelessly manipulative screenplay even more emotionally manipulative would have been a three-legged dog dying of cancer. This movie makes "Rocky" look as austere as an Ingmar Bergman film.
But damned if it didn't work on me anyway! The story of two brothers with heaps of back story who face off at an MMA championship, "Warrior" couldn't have a hokier set up, but it's executed so well that it almost makes you buy it. Get this -- one brother plans to give the $1 million prize money to the widow of a brother in arms who was killed in action; the other wants the money so that he can dig his family out of financial crisis and save their house (I might throw in that his daughter suffers from a serious heart condition). Don't worry about not having a rooting interest.
But here's the thing. The screenplay wisely avoids a lot of talky scenes in which these two brothers work out their personal demons, estrangement from each other and their gruff father (played by Nick Nolte). These guys aren't very articulate, so their pent up rage and anguish, at each other and at life in general, comes out in the ring, and that somehow feels right. The film understands that men aren't frequently given a lot of options for expressing themselves, and that sometimes beating each other up is the closest they're ever going to get to declaring a love for one another.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I almost cried at the end of this movie.
Grade: A