Walking into the cinema, I had high hopes for the movie knowing that it had quite a number of nominations to its name, and it was a boxing movie – usually boxing movies win awards right? Look at Rocky and Million Dollar Baby… anyway I digress.
The Fighter is a biopic about Dicky Eklund (Bale), an ex-superstar boxer who has to deal with drug problems and mould his brother, Micky Ward (Wahlberg) into a boxing champion. Despite the movie being about Micky Ward, supporting actor, Bale, stole the whole movie for me.
Christian Bale’s performance as a drug addict/boxing trainer, Dicky, was just brilliant. I knew he could act, but I had never seen this side of him before. Mark Wahlberg was just his usual self, and dished out nothing extraordinary. He is one fit guy though – you can really tell he worked his ass off to play the role of Micky Ward in this movie. Supporting actress Melissa Leo did a great job as the manipulative, power-hungry, over ambitious mother, Alice Ward.
Being based on a true story, I don’t know how accurate it was since I didn’t read up on it, but I heard that the final fight scene was a replica of the original fight that happened. Regardless, the movie was well shot, and I came out of the cinema feeling pumped and keen to pick up boxing as a sport. It was well paced, and there was not a low point in the movie. If I had to complain about anything, it would be there weren’t enough scenes with Christian Bale (for his acting) and Amy Adams (damn, she is fine). The Fighter deserves every award it won at the Oscars this year and it deserves to be on your list of movies to watch this year. The Fighter gets 8/10.