Unrealistic, overrated, still an enjoyable film.

Rating: 6/10 (4 January 2016)

"Warrior" is a decent sports drama that for some reason gets a massive amount of undeserved credit for things it actually fails at. And seeing how it's getting 9 and 10 out of 10 left and right, I feel like I need to show a different point of view.
Since we're all taught to state the positive things first when reviewing something I'd like to start out saying that the acting is done quite fantastic. Nick Nolte more than deserved his academy award nomination, but the main cast in general does a great job, with Tom Hardy being my personal favorite. While the backstory of the family trio of a father and his two estranged sons is pretty thin in my opinion, the film manages to grip you and affect you emotionally and the cast is obviously the main reason for that. Also, the pacing is done very well and the 140 minutes feel quite short lived. It always feels like there is something important going on and the scenes aren't just adding up or stretching out for no specific reason. The cinematography and general look of the picture are both done well and to conclude let me say that all in all this is a good manufactured and very well acted film up to this point.
BUT THEN there are its flaws and trust me when I say that they are pretty enormous. I can't understand how they are so badly overlooked by other reviewers, especially if you know anything about MMA at all.
I have to start by saying that I really thought the film was great until they really got into the fighting scenes. The first ones at the beginning were too quick to really judge the quality of the MMA presentation, but when they got into the tournament that takes up the most time in the second half, it brought my mood down significantly. The fights are, at least at some point, outright ridiculous. It's mind-boggling to me how they portrayed a "realistic" MMA fight here, especially, or unfortunately, with me being a huge fan of the sport. With the amount of spectacular throws, knockout and submission finishes, not to mention the takedowns (christ, the takedowns!), the fights have more in common with a professional wrestling match than they have with MMA bouts. Ridiculous! I don't want to spoil the matches, but let me just strengthen my argument with mentioning that Kurt Angle's character even outright powerbombs (!) a guy in his first fight. In fact, since I'm also an avid fan of pro wrestling, I have seen shoot fights which were only faking an MMA bout that gave us a more realistic MMA fight than "Warrior".
What annoyed me the most about the fights were the unrealistic amount of punishment taken by the competitors. In any MMA promotion around the world several fights would have been stopped way earlier and seeing how someone competes in a fight with a separated shoulder or gets taken down and beaten at for minutes until the round ends is just complete BS. To me, it makes the sport look bad, because it shows clichés that MMA had to fight against for years and still hasn't completely defeated to this day. But in "Warrior", you can say that MMA is portrayed as the same brutal no rules cage fight nightmare cliché that it hasn't been since the late 90s all over again.
You can see that this really upset me. But then again, I can see if you don't recognize the mentioned problems or if you just don't bother. I also see that you need to exaggerate a little bit to keep it interesting for the average viewer and it probably shouldn't impact my scoring as much, because the fighting of both brothers is supposed to be a metaphor rather than the focal point of the film's intention. Still, if you already had UFC fighter Anthony Johnson as a minor part of the cast, couldn't you just have asked him for some quick advice for how you could present the fight he's in a little bit more realistic?
Aside from that, I also have problems with the generic backstory and the lack of proper explanation. Although the film already takes up so much time, I still feel that they should have gone into detail a little bit more, especially concerning what really led to the twist between the brothers and why Joel Edgerton's character is where he is now. It's hard to go into detail without spoiling, so I won't go into it any further. Let's just say that the backstory is pretty generic and makes it harder to feel for the characters since you don't really know why they have the problems with each other they are mainly dealing with.
So at the end of my review let me say that despite all the negative I would still call "Warrior" a pretty good film. It's horrifyingly overrated and I have no idea how you can give this a 9 or even 10 out of 10, so let me recommend you to not listen to the ones praising this as an all time great. It's a good sports drama that in some parts lacks story substance and especially realism of its sports portrayal, but if you're not an MMA fan you won't be bothered. All in all I would recommend it, but I don't have to see it again and it would rate it 6.5 out of 10. And since IMDb only rates in full points, it's more a 6 than a 7 for me, so there you go, I liked it more than my rating might say.
I hope you enjoyed my review, please blame my German heritage for grammar mistakes. Goodbye and Auf Wiedersehen, your konbri :)