The Fighter (2010)

Story by Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson & Keith Dorrington
Screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson
Directed by David O. Russell

Every once in a while I watch a film that is not only great, it reminds me I watch movies at all. Even moreso, it reminds me why I first decided I want to make films. The Fighter is just such a film. The simple story of boxer "Irish" Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is the backdrop for the year's best acting performance from Christian Bale, playing Ward's older brother Dicky Edlund, a one-time boxer with a shot at greatness who has squandered his potential and now lives in a haze of crack, sex, and street crime.

Anchored by equally amazing performances from both Jack McGee (as George Ward) and Melissa Leo (as Alice Ward), the film discovers the paths that these lives have taken, and how they have arrived to this point.

Dicky, the former great, rambles and saunters on and on about "the pride of Lowell, Mass", something he hasn't been for 15 years. It is therefore on the shoulders of his younger brother Mickey to not only bring the pride back to Lowell, but to restore the Ward family name as something other than a junkie's.

The story is so simple and prototypical it's nearly laughable. However, once you watch it, riveted, there will be no laughter. Bale haunts each scene he's in, a ghost of a man with more personality than brains that weaves in and out of the narrative, much like he weaved in and out of Mickey's life.

What changes this from a Lifetime movie about a boxer's life to an amazing Oscar-worthy picture is the amazing acting from all involved. Melissa Leo is an awful, hurtful matriarch with a band of children that are so protected by their mother they would argue that the sky isn't blue if Alice told them to.

But Bale is the performance to savor, he embodies every level of drug addiction, from the way his lips move, to his speech patterns, his manner of dress, to his line delivery; Bale has become Dicky Edlund.

As the story progresses, the characters learn, feel, love, and move each other in ways that are subtle, simple, but ultimately harrowing. Bale is a modern Michaelangelo, moving with such assured strokes that he can't do wrong. And since he has become Edlund, how could he make a single wrong move? To act is one thing, to live your life as a character, a character based on a real human no less, is another matter entirely. Poignant, well made, and never dull even for a second, these are artists at the top of their game.

In the hands of a lesser director, possibly even Bale's performance would be only half as effective, but in the capable hands of David O. Russell the film flies down the rails with sparks flying. It is at times emotionally harrowing, but always visually striking, with the eye for scene detail that Russell has become famous for. A truly magnificent film, one for the ages.

"I was." - Dicky Edlund Couldn't have said it better myself.

9.7/10