Review of The Fighter (2010) by Jacob S — 22 Apr 2012

If not for Christian Bale and Amy Adams, this would've been unwatchable.

The story is a lot of been-there-done-that. Who cares if its a true story? I'll take an interesting one over a predictable one any day. Boxer is down in the dumps. Boxer has family issues. Boxer falls in love with a bartendress. Boxer makes a comeback. Sound familiar?

Its not shot in an interesting way. Rope-a-dope fighting tactics to the arena announcer's pessimistic commentary about the antagonist's chances? Thrilling.

Mark Wahlberg is pretty terrible. Some people I think mistake his performance as "subdued" or "subtle" when in actuality its really just lazy and boring. This movie's main character isn't even the fourth most interesting. That's a problem. Amy Adams' character was basically all of Mark Wahlberg's. He was a placeholder of an antagonist. The story is supposed to shine light on the fact that Christian Bale's character is too much of the focus, but ironically, the movie ends up doing the same thing. After the dust settles, the story is supposed to be about Mark Wahlberg, but at that point we really don't care about him because he has no personality and we don't care what happens to him. At no point in this movie do you feel any connection to Mickey Ward. His character is so maddeningly dull I wanted to punch my television. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that wasn't the intention.

The movie pulls too many punches. Christian Bale is fantastic as a crackhead and yet, when his story turns from mirroring his humor as a way of ignoring his problems to facing them, it doesn't hit very hard. There's a scene where he detoxes and a scene where he cries in a hallway; each for about 10 seconds. Then, he's out and everything is basically fine. The mother is affected after all her bullshit is stripped away, but it ends up feeling unsatisfying. They spend so much time making you hate her and building to this climax that sort of sputters around for a few minutes, ends abruptly, and then the story goes on its merry way.

In short, I really didn't care for this movie at all. Watch it only if you're a Bale or Adams fan.