Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
12/28/11
Sports
in practice may or may not be a metaphor for life, but on film they provide
an incredible shorthand for our day-to-day struggles. A guy has to
process a thousand loan applications to pay his mortgage? Bad Cinema.
A guy has to sink an impossible putt to win a golf tournament he had no
business being in to save his house? Great Cinema. The Inspirational
Sports movie is one of the most durable narrative templates because setting
out to win an event, preparing to compete and actually playing the game/match/tournament
is a natural three-act structure complete with a score viewers can follow.
And when it’s done well, the combination of sports drama and human drama
is a hard one to beat. Writer/Director Gavin O’Connor may have found
his calling in the genre: best known prior to 2004 for directing
Janet McTeer to one of the most acclaimed performances almost no one has
seen (in 1999’s Tumbleweeds), he landed the job on Disney’s Team
Biopic of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. The result, Miracle,
was truly transcendent in its quiet understanding of the virtues of pre-Dream
Team amateur sports and the dynamics of coaching and teamwork. O’Connor
went back to standard fare with the skillfully acted but glacially-paced
2008 police thriller misfire Pride & Glory,
but now he’s back where he belongs, telling a family drama through the
prism of mixed martial arts in Warrior. Powered by three sensational
performances that more than compensate for the script’s tendency to strain
credulity and featuring truly first-rate action sequences, Warrior will
quicken the pulse and pull the heartstrings of all but the most cynical
of viewers. And shame on them, because this pleasant fall surprise
is among the best movies of the year.
Abusive,
tyrannical father Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) raised two songs in the culture
of boxing. When his wife could stand no more and left, she took younger
brother Tommy (Tom Hardy) with her. He watched her die of cancer
and then fled into the military, all without any further contact with his
brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), who couldn’t bear to leave the love of
his life Tess (Jennifer Morrison), who’s now his wife. Brendan has
severed all ties with Paddy and now lives a happy life as a high school
teacher, but the mortgage crisis has just caught up with him: if
he doesn’t find some money FAST, he, Tess and their two daughters will
lose their home. He vowed years ago to give up the fight game after
a mediocre UFC career, but now begins taking bar fights for extra money.
When the bruises catch up with him, Principal Zito (Kevin Dunn) has no
choice but to suspend him. Meanwhile, sullen Tommy returns home to
train with Paddy: the kid is deeply damaged but an insanely ferocious
fighter, and knocks out pro Pete Grimes (Erik Apple) within seconds in
a gym sparring match that’s caught on someone’s cell phone and goes viral.
That’s good enough to get him a chance to compete in Sparta, a heavily
hyped MMA tournament with a million dollar winner-take-all prize.
With time on his suspended hands, Brendan goes back to his old trainer
Frank (Frank Grillo), who’s working with his own Sparta contender.
But when that guy goes down with an injury, Brendan talks Frank into giving
him a shot, and what do you know… both Conlon brothers are in the field
of eight. Brendan tries to mend fences with his brother, but Tommy
harbors both infinite rage and a dark secret as he tries to win the prize
for the family of a fallen comrade. In the end, only one Conlon can
prevail at Sparta.
I’ll
start with the obvious: there’s no way in any sort of real world
that an MMA tournament could have a prize as big and be hyped as heavily
as the fictional Sparta is and end up with two guys no one’s ever heard
of in a field of 8. 78? Maybe. 8? No. So
you can groan when one qualified guy gets hurt and it’s not any of the
thousands of other qualified guys who gets the nod, but a suspended high
school teacher, but dammit, this is an inspirational sports movie and the
dude needs a break! And Warrior is pretty easily forgiven
the contrivances it needs to put its pieces on the chess board because
the human drama of the Conlon family is so potent, and so well-acted that
it’s more than worth the extra cables it takes to suspend your disbelief
regarding their situation.
Nolte’s
given variations on this performance before, most notably in Hulk,
where he added Absorbing Man superpowers to his ineffectual abusive drunken
father routine, but that doesn’t make it any less of a marvel to watch.
Paddy would be quick to remind me that he’s a REFORMED drunk, but if neither
of his sons is having any of it, why should I? I liked that Warrior
is only willing to forgive him so much, and Nolte plays the role appropriately.
Hardy, for his part, should silence anyone concerned that he might not
be scary enough to fill the oversized shoes of Batman nemesis Bane in next
summer’s The Dark Knight Rises: Tommy is as terrifying as
any sympathetic character ever committed to film, the personification of
bitterness and rage. What Hardy does that’s so great is that he totally
plays Tommy as a fiendish heel and counts on his circumstances to make
us feel for him. And, MAN, is Tommy ever scary, storming into the
ring without entrance music, beating his opponent senseless in seconds
and then marching away without even waiting to be announced as the winner.
How the heck is Brendan supposed to compete with that?!?
But
what really sells this story is the breakout performance by Edgerton, the
veteran Australian actor probably best known for the infamy of his character’s
name in the Star Wars Prequels, Poogle the Lesser. Brendan’s
a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with beating people up:
a loving father, a loyal husband, a good teacher, and I really liked the
way that the script O’Connor co-wrote with Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman
rewards him for those things whenever he needs a break. His work
in the fight scenes is perfectly pitched: we believe this man is
skilled and smart enough as a fighter to pull off some seemingly impossible
upsets but that he’s not good enough that we should ever feel confident.
Helping to sell that is his semifinal opponent, wrestler Kurt Angle as
Russian superman Koba: dude is one tough guy!
There
are loads of great performances up and down the supporting cast, particularly
Grillo, who makes a sensational corner man and nails that Big Speech you
know you’re going to get in a movie like this before the final round.
Morrison does really well with a role that’s defeated many an actress before
her, walking that fine line between Tess’ genuine and understandable concern
that people like Koba and Tommy could kill her husband in the octagon and
standing by what Brendan’s doing to try to save their home. And Dunn
uses all his considerable Squishy Boss charisma to make the school an entertaining
location as Mr. Conlon Mania sweeps the halls during Sparta.
While
it’s previously been used just about exclusively as a way for tough guys
like Norris and Van Damme to seek vengeance and crack skulls, the MMA octagon
is actually a great place for Inspirational Sports Movie action to unfold,
since even the real-life UFC is noted for its possibility of upset and
the idea that all it takes is one well-executed hold to defeat even the
best of the best. Warrior takes advantage of this fact to
build to an astonishing final match where ring strategy and emotional baggage
become equally important to determining the outcome. I loved the
solution the writers came up with to end this Civil War without failing
to crown a Sparta winner.
Warrior
might be a tough sell: audiences interested in dysfunctional
family drama probably don’t know a lot about MMA, and MMA fans might want
to just cut straight to the action. But if both sides agree to meet
in the middle, they’ll get a real treat: the best-acted movie ever
to prominently feature the omoplata armlock in its plot. And you
know, NOTHING solves a family crisis like an omoplata armlock. |
