The Fighter

So only a few days after reading The Power of One, wherein a kid boxes his way to self-esteem with really good grasp of how to describe the sport to an uninitiated observer (yeah, he has some superpowers, but the book's kinda magical realism anyway) I went with my family to see "The Fighter", a pseudo-biopic about a welterweight boxer named Micky Ward (Marky Mark) and his brother, a wired, dissipated mess of an ex-fighter named Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale).  His family, his love interest and most of the town of Lowell, Massechusetts all figure into the story bit by bit, as does HBO to a surprising degree (there's a movie within the movie, which is to say the actual "America Undercover" episode about Dicky Eklund, which is right there on the IMDb for your reference).

David O. Russell directed the movie, and tonally, the film was a lot closer to Three Kings than it was to "I Heart Huckabees".  And I'm very glad for that; the trademark of that earlier movie was a deep, dark scenario constantly presenting visceral bodily threat, and yet the whole time, it stayed watchable thanks to charismatic leads and weirdly-textured background players (Spike Jonze in Three Kings, and most of the population of Lowell, specifically the teased-hair, denim-clad legion of sisters in The Fighter).  The sheer amount of time I spent laughing largely got me over what I saw as the sort of stock template into which the "inspiring" true events were slotted.

Acting was pretty good all-'round; Christian Bale, unlike Leonardo DiCaprio, can take a larger-than-life role with a wacky accent and, without the viewer having to suspend disbelief, infuse it with all the raw charisma and physicality that it needs.  Dicky was really the titular fighter in the movie; every time you saw Bale move, you saw the razor-sharp reflexes, instincts, authority and guile that Micky couldn't find.  Every time Micky went into a fight, you saw loss and failure all over his face.  You saw intimidation, you saw defeat, and that was really cool; Mark Wahlberg (now that I'm not being dismissive I'll use his non-Funky-Bunch-era name) actually undergoes a journey throughout the movie; though we see it sort of in montage, the arc from "stepping stone" to "contender" is at least clearly communicated in psychological and physical language, in the way Micky stands, in his expression -- there isn't a belabouring of BIG PERTINENT DETAILS with too much third-party explication or otherwise "wackity schmackity doo".

I liked the interpolation of the HBO documentary, which made a suitably David O. Russelly sort of comment on the nature of biographical filmmaking which sort of -- in a VERY lightweight way -- echoes season five of David Simon's theming for "The Wire", without quite getting into Charlie Kaufman territory.  Insofar as the way a story is told and reported can create impressions not only in the viewer but in the subject; it's sort of a Heisenberg principle for journalism, because the camera itself is a character.

I think, in fact, that that's the trouble I had with the movie.  For the first half, while the HBO documentary is filming, we see a clear camera, a clear perspective; we see the director of the piece in shots with Micky and Dicky, we occasionally pull away to show the camera, and eventually it culminates in most of Lowell watching the feature on TV in bars, houses and a prison rec room.  And we're aware of this representation.  And then we watch as the movie morphs into a Typical Hollywood Boxing Movie, teasing us with notions that it might be The Wrestler, or maybe even Million Dollar Baby, but is really basically Rocky 2.

Maybe that's the idea -- to leave people cheering, feeling good, voting at Oscar season.  But it abandoned the perceptiveness and perspective that made the first hour really smoulder.

In the end a really good flick; no damage quite as traumatic as the in viscero bullet-cam from Three Kings and lots of cute banter (much of it supplied by Amy Adams, fully loaded and unvarnished as a self-respecting, self-aware server at the local bar, and the myriad Eklund/Ward sisters).  It sort of handwaves the "one to grow on" lessons about the damage crack and ambition can do to a family, a town., and so forth.  Breaking Bad is out there, you can't really compete with that show's depth on the matter, so it was probably a good plan not to get too maudlin about it.  And the fighting gives you the basics, though it really only comes into play in the last little chunk of the movie.  I would love to have seen more attention to detail given to the camera crew of the HBO Sports team.  That would have provided the sort of conceptual continuity, and believable detachment, that the movie needed in order to earn its happy ending.

Yeah, the ending comes right out of "real life".  But the facts are no excuse to tell a story in a predictable, pat fashion. The actors didn't let us down, and maybe the direction didn't either, but the structure needed work. Sometimes it's not a matter of technique, it's a matter of attitude and strategy.