Fathers and Sons

Rating: Null/10 (12 September 2011)

Cameras cut away too soon from pivotal wrestling holds that spell victory for Brendan. The Moby Dick motif could have worked with adequate foreshadowing or exposition. Another movie in which a protagonist suffers unbelievable punishment in the ring for far too long to credibly achieve victory at the last moment. Despite those misgivings, this movie is well-written, well-acted and superbly directed. It reminded me of the exploration of abusive father-son relationships in such other films as "The Great Santini" with Robert Duval and "I Never Sang for My Father" with Gene Hackman. The film contains many great scenes that will be crowd pleasers for an array of audiences, especially the scenes depicting the students of physics teacher/warrior Brendan and the scenes showing Brendan getting into tip-top shape. The development of the human adversaries/behemoths is cleverly arranged with predicable but stunning results. The angle of vision resulting from realizing that one fighter is a formidable hero/AWOL soldier fleeing from some demonic Iraqi cage, adds another believable layer to Tommy and to the movie, too. I liked the scene in which Brendan allows the very serious little girls to paint his face like a fairy princess on the deck in the family's back yard. I thought the fight with the Russian was almost totally unbelievable. No one could endure that much damage; and though it is quite plausible that such a juggernaut fighter might never have faced that much pain, since he usually ended the fight in one punch, it would have been nice to see more of a detailed close-up of that particular winning hold.