Warrior (6/10)

December 17th, 2011

Oh Gawd, here we go again. Another sports movie. Montage? Check. Comebacks from impossible positions? Check. Emotional reason for competing? Check. Moments of self-doubt? Uh, yeah. Unbeatable foe? Yup, got that too. Sub-standard acting? Not quite.

They breed ‘em tough in Pennsylvania, that’s for sure. Look at Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy), for starters. Prowling around Pittsburgh like a bear on steroids, Tommy’s neck is thicker than my waist..and that’s saying something. Tommy’s back in town after years away, here to look up his dear drunk dad (Nick Nolte, appropriately cast) and to sign up in the local gym for a spot of Mixed Martial Arts. Meanwhile, over in Philly, brother Brendan is a high-school teacher by day and parking-lot underground brawler by night. Both are conflicted over financial issues and their emotional feelings or lack thereof toward their dear drunk (but now 1,000 days sober) dad.

A Big Tournament is arranged. The best sixteen fighters in the world have been invited to attend. Winner’s prize: $5 million. Second place: Nothing. Somehow, both Tommy and Brendan are invited. So, however, is a formidable Russian, the Ivan Drago of Warrior if you like, unbeaten and unbeatable. So good, in fact, that no one - no one - has ever lasted as far as the bell that ends the first round. Tommy’s tough, but surely he’s not that tough. As for Brendan, he’s clearly mismatched. So mismatched, in fact, that you wonder how on earth he ever got a chance to compete in the first place.

Brendan’s doing it for his family, you see. He’s broke because darling daughter number two had a heart condition - well, of course she did - and the medical bills crippled him financially. His wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison, whose only parts to play here are to worry herself sick over her man and to parade around in her underwear whenever possible) looks on. Brendan shouldn’t fight, but how else can they pay the bills? It’s a worry.

Tommy, meanwhile, continues his broody, menacing way. Again, you might question how he managed to get an invitation to the world’s biggest MMA tournament, seeing as he’s never stepped foot into a ring competitively before, but his haymaker speaks for itself, and a viral Youtube video fills in the blanks. Hardy, as Tommy, is the only reason to watch Warrior if you don’t like the sports movie genre. He won the coveted Pick ‘n’ Mix Flix Best Actor award for Bronson back in 2009 and nothing I’ve seen of him since has disappointed either. His Tommy is huge, stocky, and built as I would expect a cage-fight grappler to be. Unlike the majority of the rest of the cast, however, Hardy displays real acting chops when outside the ring too.

IF you can get past the fact that an unknown fighter can make it to The Show, IF you can get over Brendan’s back-story (he’s told that he was barely a .500 fighter even before he was thirty but now look at him!), IF you can overlook the hoary reasons the couple fight in the first place, IF you can ignore the supporting cast’s pure pointlessness, and IF you can ignore the random appearances of Nolte ringside at critical junctures then you’ve got yourself a hell of a movie here. Me, all I can see is that director Gavin O’Connor was given a creaking script full of every predictable turn possible and did a perfectly perfunctory job of bringing it to the screen. At two hours twenty the film groaned from its obesity, the well-filmed fight action only highlighting the weakness of the rest of the movie.

Not every movie is high art, and nor does it intend to be. Gavin O'Connor has his intended audience and aims squarely at them. I’m probably being too hard on Warrior simply because I don’t like PG13-rated sports movies at all. This is as much of a fairy tale as any Disney cartoon, and only the worst type of writers pick holes in family entertainment such as those. There are films in genres I enjoy more where I rejoice in the adherence to convention exhibited here. If you like Rocky, you’ll like this. It just so happens that I don’t, and I didn’t, but don't let me put you off.