The Fighter (2010)

The Fighter (2010) dir. by David O. Russell and starring Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund and Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward and Amy Adams as Charlene Flemming. The film tells the story of Micky Ward a talented boxer who is held back from success by his over baring family and is constantly over shadowed by his now crack addict brother Dicky who is the pride of the town. Dicky is the Eldest of the two brothers and holds a claim to fame as he knocked out a successful boxer ‘Sugar Ray’. Dicky is a local legend and can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of his family despite being a dead beat dad and an addict. Micky on the other hand is the ‘forgotten son’ constantly living in the shadow of his brother who has taken it upon himself to be his unreliable trainer. It would seem every time Micky enters the ring it ends up in a loss despite his talent and the focus of the events is always on Dicky. We then have Charlene a local college dropout turned bar tender. Charlene is the love interest who encourages Micky to break away from his family and pursue success under new management, something which isn’t particularly popular with the rest of the family, ugly sisters included.

This is a truly incredible film, packed with emotion and drama from start to finish. The script, dialogue and delivery are pretty much flawless throughout. Camera work and cinematography leave something to be desired in the fight scenes but at the same time it adopts its own unique style and for better or worse avoids the ‘Rocky’ styled boxing matches. Everything in this film is shot beautifully, even the not overly exciting boxing matches still allow every punch and hit to resonate, every drop of sweat and trail of blood makes for an utterly stunning film to watch that does not over impose itself.

The performances are consistent throughout and each character is well developed and well-acted all round. The stand out performance has to be Christian Bale both in his delivery and his commitment to the role. Visually the amount of weight lost by Bale is remarkable; it is rare to see an actor lose such a significant amount of weight for a role, especially considering his other commitments that require him to be at his physical peak. Mark Wahlberg probably delivers the weakest performance over all but I would argue that is only because of how strong everyone else is, with a different cast around him I’d say that Wahlberg would have been the strongest performer.

With that in mind this review is going to come to an early conclusion as I cannot fit the faults of this film into another paragraph. In conclusion this film was a joy to watch and is definitely among the top ten of 2010 and if you have not already seen it, you really must. It is a refreshing break from the sequels and remakes that dominated the year, a combination of great acting, cinematography, sound, costume and even make up that will be memorable if nothing else. This film really is a must see and is deserving of the Oscars it achieved.