Film File - Warrior
Boxing films have always made for good box office with solid stories that have punched above their weight - just look at Oscar-winning 'Rocky' and 'Million Dollar Baby', plus any number of other pugilistic adventures since. But it has also often been a genre where various films have been floored by a public knockout punch - think 'The Champ', 'The Kid' and 'Tough Enough'. While 'Warrior' does suffer from some ropey footwork and the odd stagger toward the canvas, overall, it does manage to land a few decent jabs at good entertainment. The story opens with US Army Marine Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) returning home for the first time in 14 years to enlist the help of his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), to train for Sparta, the biggest winner-takes-all event in mixed martial arts history. A former wrestling prodigy, Tommy blazes a path toward the championship finals while his brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), an ex-fighter-turned-teacher, returns to the ring in a desperate bid to save his family from financial ruin. However, when Brendan's unlikely underdog rise sets him on a collision course with the unstoppable Tommy, the two brothers are forced to confront each other and the forces that pulled them apart many years before. A film with a finger on the current zeitgeist of America, 'Warrior' is an intense glimpse into a family's journey from dysfunction to reparation, told through two brothers - one fighting for his country, the other for his family. When Tommy and his mother escaped his abusive father all those years ago, his brother stayed behind to eventually marry his high school girlfriend, Tess (Jennifer Morrison). But Brendan's family has been hit hard by the economic crisis and he and Tess are in deep debt on their modest house. Having exhausted all other avenues, he reluctantly revisits his distant past and begins moonlighting in small local underground fights, hoping to win enough money to stay in the house for another month while they can figure out a viable solution. When his fighting gets him suspended from his teaching job, a comeback that began in parking lots out of desperation for quick extra cash morphs into a personal crusade to be taken seriously as a fighter despite his age and long absence from the sport, and to push himself as far as he can possibly go. His brother, Tommy, has his own reasons for wanting to win the $5 million winner's purse at Sparta, having made a promise to a fallen comrade he served with in Iraq to take care of his family in the event of his death. While the world of mixed martial arts is still relatively new this side of the pond, it has become a huge hybrid sport measured in billions of dollars in the US. Possessed of all the usual fight movie clichés - family, fortune, loyalty and the promise of a better life after that final bout - 'Warrior' still manages to seize the imagination not just for its good script, but also for its assured direction, both courtesy of Gavin O'Connor. Opting for a gritty and atmospheric tone and style, O'Connor's deft touch in portraying the blood and guts of this ruthless sport with a panache that elevates the project above any syrupy sentimentalism is helped to a great degree by the acting. Hardy sucks in all the attention in every scene, managing to make even the more predictable sequences enthralling. Edgerton and Morrison are solid in slightly underwritten parts, and the ageing but still growling Nick Nolte reminds us that maturity has many incarnations on the silver screen. 'Warrior' hits pretty hard, but it's not quite a knockout.