The Fighter (2010)
The Fighter (USA) Directed by David O. Russell Written by Scott Silver; Paul Tamasy; Eric Johnson Starring Mark Wahlberg; Christian Bale; Melissa Leo; Amy Adams; Jack McGee; Mickey O’Keefe
In an era fraught with scandal and controversy within the sport, Junior Welterweight “Irish” Micky Ward rose out of relative obscurity to become a national symbol of what was right with boxing, demonstrating the kind of blood and guts determination and fortitude that movies are made of. Wallah, we get the story of Lowell, Massachusetts native Micky and his half brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a once promising fighter himself whose life became dominated by crack addiction, multiple arrests, and repeated periods of incarceration.
In real life Ward’s career record was only 38-13, but he won a championship belt, and fought three epic battles (winning one) with nemesis (and later, good friend), the late Arturo Gatti, a warrior who was Ward’s equal in the never-quit-no-matter-what department. Both braved serious cuts, injuries, and multiple losses throughout their career, but continued on to eventually see their individual stars rise in their thirties. Their fights with one another in 2002 and 2003, which brought out the best in both men, were shown on HBO. These were particularly brutal contests, marked by a plethora of blood and closed eyes and the kind of brutal beauty and awe inspiring courage that defines the very best example of the controversial sport.
The film doesn’t touch the Gatti period, choosing to concentrate on the events leading up to Ward’s rise to prominence. Events too are heavily fictionalized, including the compression of Ward’s long life in boxing, and what was actually an eight year prison sentence for Eklund (in the film it feels like about one). Included though is the well known incident where Ward’s right hand was smashed by a Lowell police officer, though it actually happened much earlier in his life, and became a defining aspect of the latter part of his boxing career. Because his hand was so badly damaged and would repeatedly break, he was forced to rely on his left, the same hand he would use to dig into the body of his opponents, a devastating shot that became Ward’s trademark. The film barely touches on this very key detail, and its overall approach seems to be one long favored in Hollywood, where truth is less important than the aim of telling a good story. Here, director Russell blends genres and mixes tones to create a straight-forward, but simultaneously odd composite.
Producer/lead Wahlberg spent years trying to bring the story to the screen. Originally, other actors (Brad Pitt; Matt Damon) and directors (most notably, pre-The Wrestler Darren Aronofsky) were attached. There were several scripts and several near starts. The journey was also made more rocky by a controversy surrounding the fact that, at one point, Eklund sold the rights to his brother’s story.
The famously volatile Russell, who previously cast Wahlberg in Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, was eventually brought on board, and he clearly saw the film as one primarily about family as opposed to an action based boxing story. While care is taken to recreate fight footage, and (with all the starts and stops) Wahlberg spent multiple years training to look like a fighter, the lack of budget (11 million for production) and shortened shoot shows in a definite lack of scope in the fight scenes. Wahlberg is, at best, adequate in these sequences, moving and throwing punches reasonably, but many of the scenes are too obviously choreographed, and Wahlberg seems to be in slow motion in some of the workout sessions (one can practically hear the counts dictating the next punch, duck, or block).
Russell has lots of fun at the expense of the family, making a mockery out of the seven Ward/Eklund sisters (who are less characters than caricature) and Mom/manager Alice (Melissa Leo - a wonderful actress, who struggles mightily with the vaunted accent). The Oedipal implications are obvious, with favored elder son Dicky, the once “Pride of Lowell”, receiving the lion’s share of the attention and accolades. The delivery of the information regarding Dicky’s familiar and community status is hardly subtle, however, as we are repeatedly told about his fight with Sugar Ray Leonard where he either did or didn’t knock Ray down.
Bale is nothing short of sensational as Eklund, stealing the film with a performance that walks a precarious line between trick- filled imitation and brilliant methody inhabiting, replete with another distressing weight loss (not Machinist distressing, but still…). Though he slips at times, Bale also nails the accent in places (”You’re Micky Ward”), and overall it’s close enough not to take away from his manic, humorous, and soulful take on Eklund, a fighter/trainer/neighborhood character/thief/crack addict. Eklund was something of a physical marvel, supremely athletically gifted, possessing a wealth of boxing insight and knowledge, but compelled by deep seated demons driving him to alcohol and drug abuse, undermining and eventually cutting short a once promising career.
Wahlberg, for his part, doesn’t try to do too much, and this is a good thing. Though at times his go to breathless exhortations resemble Casey Affleck’s solid, but less than hard guy portrayal of Patrick Kenzie in brother Ben’s Gone Baby Gone, but the stillness in his performance manages to close in on Ward’s quiet, humble manner, and his comfort with the accent and surroundings (having grown up in a big family in a similarly blue collar Boston neighborhood) pays dividends in his ability to settle into the role. While Bale’s turn is obviously the standout here, Wahlberg grounds the film with a solid baseline, and without him The Fighter would’ve failed to achieve the alchemy that, despite some serious flaws, eventually adds up to success.
While Russell’s film takes some time to get going, the eventual accumulation of a well grounded sense of place and well cast minor characters and extras (many local non-pros, including a number of Eklund/Wards appear) begins to take over. The fact that there is no soft peddling of crack addiction, and a well-timed inclusion of the film within a film device, depicting the production of the real life HBO documentary, 1995s High on Crack Street, featuring Eklund, his friend Boo Boo (played by Paul Campbell here), and a third female addict, gives us a reckoning within the family and community, demonstrating how far off their insular world was from reality.
The miscalculation that stands out is simply one of degrees. While the idea of multiple homely, low rent sisters with bad hair who move and speak in unison is amusing on the surface (and does provide some cheap laughs), Russell goes to the well one too many times, and the cumulative affect results in condescension - the kind of skewering of simple-folk that would make a director like Sam Mendes proud. While there is a current of realism that aids the film’s strongest sections, this slip cuts into the overall tone of the piece in its entirety, one that would have done better staying farther away from broad comedy and allowing earned humor to arise naturally. The writers and filmmaker evidently didn’t trust that simple lines delivered with panache were funny enough, and determined the audience needed broad characterizations, over-the-top blow ups (like the porch scene with the sisters confronting Mickey’s new girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams), and a kind of running “in-joke” worthy of a cookie cutter TV sit-com to “get it”.
Still, like all good sports biopics, what eventually wins an audience over are elements like the very real emotion on display, and an underdog lead character who dreams of doing better, being more. Here, a major component is family challenges/dysfunction; and, while often depicted in a ridiculous manner, the Ward/Eklund’s problems aren’t far removed from the kind of issues faced by families the world over. And while the “joke” involving the sisters certainly reduces them to something far, far less than fully realized individuals, Ward’s relationship with new girlfriend Charlene; father, George Ward (Jack McGee ); Mother, Alice, and Lowell police office/trainer, Mickey O’Keefe (playing himself), smacks of the real thing. And regardless of the repeated fun poked at the family, it’s obvious that there is simultaneously an intent to honor their tight bonds, eventually unveiling the kind of unconditional love and support that knows no bounds.
In the end, it is the moments of realism, the generally strong sense of place, lead Wahlberg’s comfort with the world, and one knockout performance from Bale, that push The Fighter beyond the average, helping it offset the rather unfortunate representation of living and breathing working class people who deserve to be seen as something more than cartoon constructs.