MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Fighter’

When previews and trailers for The Fighter came out across the nation around the beginning of November, I didn’t really think much of the movie. Mark Wahlberg? Yeah, he wasn’t too bad in The Departed, but for every one of those movies, there’s The Happening. I can imagine some audiences shying away from the movie, reluctant to see a film about boxing.

We really need to stop going with our gut reactions. As a boxing movie, The Fighter is one of the best. It’s a spectacular entertainment that’s every bit as rousing as Rocky. But it’s much more than a meager “boxing movie,” as some might label it. The Fighter is also a great character study about family, addiction and ego. It’s an incredibly uplifting movie and, at times, a very funny one. There’s not an instance in The Fighter where you can sense that the filmmakers have anything less than absolute respect for the art of boxing and the people who inspired this project.

The titular character is Micky Ward, working to make his way up the welterweight championship. He lives in the shadow of his older half-brother Dicky Eklund, who made it all the way to fighting Sugar Ray Leonard before succumbing to a lifetime of drugs and disgrace. Ward is helped by a girl he falls in love with, Charlene Fleming, who helps him to reject the recurring negative pattern of Dicky and the rest of Micky’s family that keeps him from winning his bouts.

But that simple story is expanded upon by David O. Russell largely by making each one of these characters as real as possible. The entire cast turns out exceedingly good performances, and if they can become over-the-top, Russell manages to make it feel like just another part of the small world he’s created. Using mostly hand-held cameras, he manages to stay out of the way and let his actors tell the story.

With its intimate nature that occasionally seems created for the stage, The Fighter can feel like an old Elia Kazan movie. Wahlberg and Bale take what could easily become simply types and give the story not just some gravity but, more importantly, a sense of humanity. Bale is never just a crack addict; he’s a person who happens to be addicted to crack. Russell is clearly enamored with Bale’s performance, and as a result, he grants his actor too long of a leash. Bale dominates every frame in which he appears, but sometimes he overreaches, and his scene-stealing antics occasionally verge on clownish.

Dicky’s losing battle with crack culminates in a harebrained money-raising scheme for which he earns a lengthy penitentiary stay. But just as we begin to suspect The Fighter might morph into a gritty addiction memoir, the narrative shifts its focus to Micky, who, after suffering quietly for years under the misguided tutelage of his junkie brother and their domineering mother/manager, Alice, finally starts to assert himself. With the help of his new girlfriend, Charlene, a bulldog with a tramp stamp whose foul mouth and stiff upper lip provide the perfect antidote to the machinations of Micky’s mother and seven catty sisters, his own comeback finally gains momentum.

The Fighter is a conventional boxing picture, with its plucky underdog, its hatefully hilarious and trashy family holding him back and “that one last shot” that we all hope we get. Wahlberg has convincingly played sports figures before, but his Micky feels so lived-in that this performance transcends anything he’s ever done. Bale’s maniacal commitment to Dicky’s every tick and foible, Leo’s sexually charged monster mom and Adams’ almost feral transformation from Disney princess make this an acting showcase that’s sure to be remembered.