Review of The Fighter (2010) by Graham B — 13 Nov 2014

Old Thoughts- Ah, its good to be reminded of how much I love Christian Bale. I think he'll be the one to beat for supporting actor this year. He stole every scene he was in. The other actors were great too. But Christian's charisma (or his character's charisma) was hard to ignore. I enjoyed it but I can't say it was a that great of a movie. The acting was the best part of it.

New Thoughts- Yeah, Christian sure is good. He's so entertaining to watch in this. And Melissa Leo is just fantastic. I would hate to know her character in real life! She'd intimidate and scare the pants off me! Anyway, this movie just doesn't do well on repeated viewings. I remember I saw this in the theaters, immediately after I saw Black Swan, with my dad. That was super awkward so we both enjoyed this better after that. But I've watched Black Swan like 12 times and never revisited this movie until this week. I don't really care about most sports movies. This is certainly no Chariots Of Fire. I think Ebert said the ending felt more like a conclusion than a victory. I would agree with that. It just kid of ends and I don't really feel any big "heck yeah!" moment when he wins at the end. I like the dialogue. I LOVE Jack McGee! He's awesome. I'm annoyed by some of little lazy moments I have a hard time overlooking. I bothers me that there's a repeated clip of interviews with people on the street during the HBO documentary. I don't like the repeated use of that song from the car commercial. I don't like it when movies recycle the same song. It takes me out of the movie. Theme's are different though. It's complicated. I hate that this is supposed to be the early 90's and this kid is singing the "Ice Cream and Cake" song, which is, what? Mid 2000's? I like some of the shots and enjoy the acting and writing. It's certainly better than that joke of a movie American Hustle. But Not quite at the level of Silver Linings Playbook. It just doesn't really feel triumphant to me. It's kind of hard when Micky is such a quiet guy surrounded by EXTREMELY colorful characters. I get that that's how he is in real life. It just makes for kind of a weirdly boring protagonist.