Better than I ever would've expected

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2012)

What happens when you have two separate underdogs fight each other in a winner-take-all competition? You end up hoping neither one of them will lose. That's the situation in this thoroughly engrossing mixed martial arts film. Something I never thought I'd say after teen-filled drama Never Back Down released in 2008 that used unlicensed MMA bouts as a backdrop.
Brendan Conlon (played by Joel Edgerton) is a man who gave up fighting professionally for his wife Tess (played by Jennifer Morrison) with whom he now has two daughters. Tommy Riordan (played by Tom Hardy) left home with his mother to escape his father's abuse and joined the Marines after she passed. Brendan (Edgerton) is now staring at a debt he can't overcome thanks to his mortgage and goes back to professional fighting in the form of parking lot bouts with inexperienced opponents. And when a video of one of these bouts on the internet is seen by his boss (Kevin Dunn), the principal of the high school where he teaches science, the winner-take-all event is his only hope to avoid foreclosure and relocation. Tommy (Hardy), on the other hand, made a promise to the family of a fallen comrade and intends to keep it no matter what that might mean for his competitors. That includes Brendan who is only revealed to be Tommy's brother well into the film.
I'm not really a fan of MMA. I had a passing interest in boxing at one time, watching it that is, but it passed. That said, a well-made film can make any sport, with the exception of curling, seem interesting. And while some may see the release of this film as being too soon after the critically-acclaimed 2010 Mark Wahlberg film The Fighter, or as some sort of Rocky rip-off, I see a well-made, well-acted, realistic film about two men determined to fulfill their obligations the best way they know how. In the ring. Not to mention the sympathetic performances put forth by Nick Nolte as the father of the two competitors and Jennifer Morrison as the suffering wife.