There’s a great comeback story
lurking inside The Fighter – ostensibly the tale of how a Lowell, Mass.
kid, “Irish” Mickey Ward, escaped an environment where ex-cons out number
college grads, to claim a title, in turn the springboard to a boxing trilogy
fans consider among the greatest in modern ring history: Mickey Ward vs. Arturo
Gatti.
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The Fighter is less a boxing
movie than the screwiest of screwball comedies in which the poor pug, Mickey (a
ring-ready Mark Wahlberg) dukes it out with a control freak mom, Alice (a
ferociously focused Melissa Leo) and his crack addicted half brother Dickie (a
scene stealing Christian Bale) for the honor of getting his block rocked in the
ring. The power of the family stuff is a tribute to the movie’s real come back
kid, director David O. Russell, who as You Tube fans know from his verbal
meltdown with Lily Tomlin on the set of I heart huckabees, has a real
mouth on him. Russell – who created two of the 90’s looniest family comedies:
the Gus Van Sant inspired mother/son incest, Oedipal angst romp Spanking the
Monkey and the queer Federal agent on acid spoof Flirting with Disaster –
here confronts the American Irish behaving badly hi-jinks of Gone Baby Gone and
The Town and finds glee amidst the bar fights, bad grammar, bad hair and
assorted low life flotsam.
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In 2006’s Frozen River Leo
sparked a career revival with a hard bitten cashier whose tough love included
pulling a pistol on her cute teen boy (Charlie McDermott) when he takes a
blowtorch to their trailer. Here Leo trims her soft edges, goes brassy blonde
and delivers a harrowing portrait of a slum mom who’s all but married to her
crack head son – Russell ably manages the terror tinged slapstick of Leo
chasing Bale out of crack houses (leaping into garbage bag padded dumpsters)
while throwing everything but the kitchen sink at her beaten down real hubby.
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Know for delivering uncomfortable
material in a style where dark comedy does a Saint Vitus Dance with
drama, Russell provides an early litmus test on whether you’ll go the distance
with The Fighter: Mickey has given the finger to both mom and
Dickie pairing off with a sassy female bartender (Amy Adams) who urges him to
get professional management. Alice and all seven of Mickey’s sisters drive up
in a kind of pimp-mobile, knocking over trash cans – the raiding party gallops
up on the girlfriend’s porch producing an attitude fueled, hair pulling melee.
“Why are ya hiding from us,
Mickey?”
“He’s not hiding.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was
talking to my son. What are ya doing Mickster, huh?”
“I ain’t hiding from nobody,
Alice.”
“What are ya gonna do? Turn your
back on Dickie, next, huh? All we ever wanted for you was for you to be world
champion.”
“He’s a grown man, he can think for
himself.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Skank!”
“Don’t call me skank. I’ll ripped
that nasty hair right out of your head,”
“I’m his mother and his manager.”
“You’re not my manager anymore. I’m
not waiting for Dickie -- I’m not getting any younger.”
“Who’s gonna look after ya,
Sweetheart? I know ya don’t understand it but I had nine kids. I love everyone
of you the same.”
“You have a funny way of showing
it, letting him get beat up, letting him get his hand
broken!”
Yes, there is a women in cages camp
like flavor to the first two thirds of the movie – which includes a Russell created
film-within-film faux HBO doc about Dickie’s decent into crack addiction,
possibly to escape the tyranny of family expectations. Russell’s genius for
staging physical comedy keeps you looking even when your best instincts say
flee the scene.
The boxing scenes pop, the acting
is the high voltage grandiose playing to the cheap seats style that gets
noticed at Oscar time: Bale creates a Pac Man like charming addict brother, so
twitchy and needy, you can see why Mickey had little energy to spare for his
ring fights. I miss the Gatti fights, but The Fighter is worth its
slapstick Southie chronicles angst for the prize of getting David O. Russell
back in the director’s chair.