(Long Island, N.Y.) Finally.after a few weeks of watching and reviewing fairly mediocre movies, I finally get to write about a good one. That movie is Warrior, a fighting/drama film starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte.
You know, considering how popular Mixed Martial Arts are, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to put out an MMA-themed flick to cash in on the craze.
I’m also surprised that director Gavin O’Connor managed to make one that is as much an effective drama as it is a no-holds-barred exhibition of brutal, professional-level fight scenes.
I think the ads have been touting Warrior as being “inspired by a true story.” Honestly, I have no idea if that’s true, but even when something is “inspired by a true story” it’s usually 97.3% made up, anyway. The late, great comedian Mitch Hedberg once had a joke in his routine where he said an incident where a woman drove her car into a lake inspired him to write a movie about a gorilla. Yeah, that pretty much sums up the Hollywood film-making process.
Anyway, our movie centers around two estranged brothers- troubled ex-Marine Tommy (Hardy, who will be playing the evil villain Bane in the new Batman film), and former MMA fighter turned public school teacher and family man, Brendan (Edgerton, who as far as I know, will not be fighting Batman any time soon). Nick Nolte adheres to type as an actor in a nonetheless impressive role as the brothers’ drunken old dad, Paddy. The gist of the plot is that there’s this big MMA tournament and both brothers start training to enter it, each for their own personal reasons. However, Brendan has “trust” issues with both Tommy and dad, and must finally confront the issues that tore their family apart.that’s the “drama” aspect coming into play, so we as an audience have something to watch between the in-ring beat-downs.
As I said earlier, Warrior both impresses as a drama
and as a movie about grown men pounding each other into mush within the confines of a cage. The story itself is solid but unremarkable – there are echoes of just about any “underdog” sporting film you’d care to mention – but it’s the acting prowess of our leads that really kicks the film into overdrive. Hardy, despite looking like a really mean guy, is actually extremely talented in front of the camera…go see the whacked-out 2008 film Bronson for a good example of this guy’s range as an actor.
In Warrior, Hardy portrays a character with a tough exterior but has a bubbling cauldron of emotional problems just under the surface. Edgerton is great as well as a man failing to make ends meet with his nice, safe day job and is forced to go back into the cage to provide for his family (and, of course, he has a wife who doesn’t support this course of action.isn’t there always one of those?). But Nick Nolte is truly the man of the hour in Warrior. Again, he’s not re-inventing himself here, but he still delivers an outstanding performance within the confines of a man trying to pull his lost family back together while also burdened with the nonstop fun of being a recovering alcoholic.
And, let’s get to what’s probably the main draw for the kids.the fights. Realistic, masterfully-choreographed, filmed beautifully with an in-your-face style that really drives home the punishment these guys absorb, the combat in Warrior is the next best thing to putting on a pair of MMA gloves and letting Bas Rutten “liver shot” you until you’re a quivering pile of Jell-O on the mat. Word on the street is that Hardy and Edgerton did about 85% of their own fighting, which is pretty.well, I’ve used variations on “impressive” at least twice before in this review already, but nothing else comes to mind and I’m too lazy to open Internet Explorer and look at an online Thesaurus, so I’ll just say that it’s pretty impressive. Again.
So,
Warrior ends up being to MMA movies what Black Swan was to Ballet movies. That is, something that paints it’s respective sport in the best and worst possible lights, while highlighting the complex human drama behind the men who compete in it…provided that anything in the script is really inspired on something that happened in reality like the producers claim. Highly recommended.
