Strong Performances Push Familiar Story

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2012)

Warrior (2011)
*** (out of 4)
At first you think WARRIOR is just going to be your typical ROCKY-style drama and for the most part it is but there's one major difference here. The story is about an older brother (Joel Edgerton) and a younger brother (Tom Hardy) both of whom are in rough spots in their lives. The older one, a school teacher, is about to lose his house and the younger brother is holding some dark secrets about his time in the war. The two begin training for a MMA tournament while their father, a former drunk (Nick Nolte) tries to reconnect with both of them. I must admit that this film really took me by surprise. Most boxing, karate or other type of fighting movies usually deliver a good guy you root for a bad guy who you want to see destroyed. That's not the case here because when the final fight comes you want to see both men win and it's hard to pick which one you want to see standing at the end. I thought the entire film was just one predictable scene after another but I will admit that it's so well acted that you can't help but get drawn into the story. There's really no twist that happens that you don't see coming from a mile away and this includes various "secrets" that come out about the younger brother and of course the older one has various financial issues as well as a conflict going on with his wife. There's no question that all of this backstory is just melodrama but a lot of it works. Even though it doesn't work 100% of the time I still give the filmmakers credit for trying to do something than just one fight scene after another. Both Edgerton and Hardy are very believable in their roles. Both roles are so different that it really gives both actors a chance at building the characters and making the viewer care for them in different ways. Nolte gives his strongest performance in years and there's a crying sequence that will certainly move even the hardest soul. The one major problem with the movie is that director Gavin O'Connor goes way overboard with the camera shots. This is certainly a case where less would have been much more because the style often messes up what the actors are doing with their characters.