Will MMA film Warrior, starring Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, receive the same plaudits as The Fighter come awards season? Mark thinks it certainly deserves to
As Warrior has much more going for it than its overlap with David O. Russell's biopic, we'll come to the comparison later. In essence, Warrior is the story of the two Conlon brothers, both of whom
have had past experience of mixed martial arts fighting. Brendan (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy (Tom Hardy) were split up when their mother left their alcoholic and abusive father, Paddy (Nick Nolte).
Tommy opted to go with his mother, while Brendan stayed at home to be with his girlfriend. He then married her and fathered two little girls, taking a job as a high school physics teacher. In the meantime, Tommy seemed to disappear off the face of the earth when the boys' mother passed away.
But the announcement of an MMA Superbowl of sorts, in the form a grand prix tournament called Sparta, finds Tommy returning to the family home to ask Paddy to train him for the competition. Elsewhere, Brendan's dire financial situation puts him back into the fighting game, and the two brothers are on a collision course in the cage.
The sport has been covered on screen before, in fare as varied as the high-school movie, Never Back Down, and David Mamet's 2008 drama, Redbelt. But of all of the films made on the subject of MMA thus far, Warrior, as a worthy and awards-friendly feature, feels like the one with the greatest mainstream crossover appeal.
It's a film that treats the sport seriously, while still coming across as a relationship drama first and a sports movie second. While still honouring the ancient sports movie traditions of the underdog and, most entertainingly, an unstoppable Russian giant, it subverts the audience's expectations.
To paint the film in black and white would be to say that Brendan is the hero and Tommy is the villain. There's nothing so simplistic in Warrior, it's not just the sibling relationship that gives it its depth, but the fact that both brothers are underdogs in different ways.
Sparta is apparently a competition between the 16 toughest middle-weight fighters on the planet. Three of those conveniently happen to come out of Pittsburgh, but hey, the film's good enough while you're watching it that you don't quibble over the coincidences too much. Tommy and Brendan each seem to come out of nowhere to join that number.
There's no danger of Warrior becoming repetitive as we advance through the stages of Sparta. The first fight of the tournament is Tommy's, and we’re familiar with his character's strengths and weaknesses by this point. We know he's seething with a barely contained rage, and Tom Hardy has played it well enough that you're rooting for him.
The fights alternate between Brendan and Tommy in such a way that you want different things from each scene. You want to see Brendan persevere against astronomical odds. You want to see Tommy give another hugely entertaining smack down. The action is consistently good throughout the film, capturing every bone-crunching turn.
But crucially, the scenes between the action resonate just as much, and as with The Fighter, the family drama is what comes to the fore. Christian Bale won an Oscar for his portrayal of Micky Ward's brother Dicky Eklund, and so did Melissa Leo, for playing their mother, Alice. Somehow it feels like the corresponding performances in Warrior will be overlooked at Oscar time, even if they're just as deserving.
If you're watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at the cinema on Friday, and you popped into another screen, showing Warrior, you would see an unbelievable difference between Tom Hardy's characters. He's rightly being praised as a major rising star, even if his overnight success has actually taken over a decade, and his formidable performance as Tommy is one of the best of the year.
Hardy completely inhabits that character, and he shares the best scenes with the film's other MVP, Nick Nolte. Nolte usually sounds like he's on the verge of being sick, and he's reliably grumbly in the role of recovering alcoholic Paddy. At the same time, his performance is pitched very well and it leads to some of the most emotionally powerful moments in the film.
Joel Edgerton's performance is strong too, but it's of the Mark Wahlberg variety- a solid but understated role for the larger characters to bounce off of. But as Bale said when he won his Oscar for The Fighter, you can't have big performances without the small performances to balance the film, and Edgerton and Hardy build the believable sense of a shared suffering and bitterness between them.
Warriormight occasionally stretch credulity in its set-up, but it's the journey that's more enjoyable than the events themselves. And refreshingly, it's a sports movie in which either of the final combatants could win- it's rare to find something so unpredictable. It's hugely enjoyable and uplifting stuff, and its 140 minute runtime flies by.
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