Sligthly more intricate than a basic biopic, The Fighter follows the tale of not one but two boxers, “Irish” Micky Ward and his half-brother Dickie Eklund, centering around crisis points in their lives in the mid-nineties. Its working-class Massachussetts setting (with deleriously heavy accents in tow) gives it an instant feeling of a Rocky meets Good Will Hunting.
Like any boxing film worth its salt, you will find the usual tropes of the genre in spades – training sequences, fight montages and obligatory sweat-splattering punches. The Fighter doesn’t wrestle very hard to escape from the limitations of its genre as a middle of the road sports biopic. There are moments of light relief (generally from Ward’s family of outrageously haired family) and occasional darkness (Eklund’s crack addict escapades and faded failed glory.)
The performances of both leads are good: Bale (looking distrubingly like Will Arnett’s GOB Bluth) delivering with a now-standard scattershot intensity that steals scenes regularly from the more passive and restrained Wahlberg. Its not that Wahlberg is bad, its just that Micky Ward seems so relatively level-headed that he’s not asked to deviate too much from his default mode of down-on-his-luck boxer looking for a break. His redemption never seems nearly as necessary as Dickie’s.
Somewhat fittingly, given how much placement ESPN is given within the film (and how it recurs within the plot), a large part of me feels that Micky Ward’s story would be better suited to one of their generally spell-binding “30 For 30” sports documentaries that aired last season. A Hollywood version of life naturally climaxes with Ward’s greatest victory, rather than his greatest defeat (those against Arturo Gatti, generally recognised as the most significant fights of his career). As a sportsfan, one knows that nearly every boxer goes out of the game on his back and there’s no shame in that being part of the story.
Words: Ian Lamont
