There's always been an intangible gap between professional athletes and the common of mortals. They're beloved by the masses because they're different, unaffected by the struggle for survival of mere taxpayers and willing to sacrifice themselves to achieve greatness. Since mixed martial arts took over mainstream culture like gentrification taking over Brooklyn a decade ago, there's been a shift in that perception. Helped by a slickly produced reality show and a fundamental misunderstanding of the sport by a majority of people, the UFC has managed to convince people that mixed martial arts was a sport for the common man to reinvent himself and earn his redemption for past failures. The movie WARRIOR isn't exactly paid advertisement. It's a rather well-written film about a dysfunctional family of athletes. It buys into the mythos of mixed martial arts so hard though, it kind of torpedoes several key moments.
Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) is a lonely, recovering alcoholic who left a long trail of misery behind him. His two estranged sons hate his guts.Tommy (Tom Hardy) because he has suffered through the worst years of his illness and Brendan (Joel Edgerton) because he has neglected him in favor of his more athletically gifted brother. Brendan tried to turn his back on the family's athletic past though, becoming a physics teacher in high school, but it catches back to him when the heart transplant of his daughter puts his family in dire straits. He has to return to the cage if he wants them to keep the house. The much more mysterious Tommy is also back in the cage after disappearing for several years and he picked up just where he left off, beating people senseless. Both find a place in a Grand Prix tournament called Sparta, that could settle their respective financial future forever.
There are a lot of silly mixed martial arts-related things in WARRIOR. For example, it's a pretty young sport (the first UFC was held 21 years ago), so there's no such thing as a family legacy. What you see in WARRIOR is a page torn from every boxing movie. The Tommy sequences in particular. Today's mixed martial artists are nothing like that. They are parentless kids wearing rash guards and sweat pants every day, sleeping on gym mats, giving private classes and selling $5 protein shakes to finance their dream. Tommy and Brendan are almost literally picked off the street to compete for Sparta also, which is supposed to be the greatest mixed martial arts tournement on Earth. I'm not even getting into the technical aspect of the martial arts displayed because it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the movie, but let's just say it takes creative liberties.
Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) is a lonely, recovering alcoholic who left a long trail of misery behind him. His two estranged sons hate his guts.Tommy (Tom Hardy) because he has suffered through the worst years of his illness and Brendan (Joel Edgerton) because he has neglected him in favor of his more athletically gifted brother. Brendan tried to turn his back on the family's athletic past though, becoming a physics teacher in high school, but it catches back to him when the heart transplant of his daughter puts his family in dire straits. He has to return to the cage if he wants them to keep the house. The much more mysterious Tommy is also back in the cage after disappearing for several years and he picked up just where he left off, beating people senseless. Both find a place in a Grand Prix tournament called Sparta, that could settle their respective financial future forever.
There are a lot of silly mixed martial arts-related things in WARRIOR. For example, it's a pretty young sport (the first UFC was held 21 years ago), so there's no such thing as a family legacy. What you see in WARRIOR is a page torn from every boxing movie. The Tommy sequences in particular. Today's mixed martial artists are nothing like that. They are parentless kids wearing rash guards and sweat pants every day, sleeping on gym mats, giving private classes and selling $5 protein shakes to finance their dream. Tommy and Brendan are almost literally picked off the street to compete for Sparta also, which is supposed to be the greatest mixed martial arts tournement on Earth. I'm not even getting into the technical aspect of the martial arts displayed because it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the movie, but let's just say it takes creative liberties.
This one's not so bad. Sloppy but realistic. Could happen in a fight.
I didn't take offense to the romantic vision of mixed martial arts that WARRIOR offers. I have no doubt it might've motivated a couple morons to sell their possessions and start a mixed martial arts career, but it tells a good story that stays within its means. It's a rather basic confrontation of archetypes, like Chris Lambert emphasized, but what it was interesting because the story confronted them. Both Conlon brothers are fighting for entirely valid causes and forces you to make a judgement of values. regardless of the final outcome. I thought it was a smart and original way to use archetypes without falling into intense clichés. There's an undeniable quality to the line-to-line delivery, too. I thought the way WARRIOR built mystery around the character of Tommy, by using his unspeakable rage, was particularly brilliant. I'm not a believer in the mythic structure, I think it's been done to death and that every copy of that stupid manual should be burned, but WARRIOR thought outside the box in its usage.
I couldn't help myself but to like WARRIOR. Of course, it's perpetuating the fallacy that professional mixed martial arts is some kind of access gate that turns the working class hero into a God of the Stadium, but I knew that going in and I was pleasantly surprised that the movie bothered writing a strong and original family drama to go along with it. If I didn't spend twelve years of my life in a mixed martial arts gym, I would've proably loved this movie to death for being a contemporary heir to ROCKY and BLOODSPORT, but I still like it from a polite distance. That is what a good screenplay can do for a movie. WARRIOR is a romance for men. The in-cage action is silly at times, but it bothers to tell a good, cohesive and original story and the cast delivers solid performances all around, so the least I can do is not being offended by it. It's a movie that's interesting in its merits and its flaws.
I couldn't help myself but to like WARRIOR. Of course, it's perpetuating the fallacy that professional mixed martial arts is some kind of access gate that turns the working class hero into a God of the Stadium, but I knew that going in and I was pleasantly surprised that the movie bothered writing a strong and original family drama to go along with it. If I didn't spend twelve years of my life in a mixed martial arts gym, I would've proably loved this movie to death for being a contemporary heir to ROCKY and BLOODSPORT, but I still like it from a polite distance. That is what a good screenplay can do for a movie. WARRIOR is a romance for men. The in-cage action is silly at times, but it bothers to tell a good, cohesive and original story and the cast delivers solid performances all around, so the least I can do is not being offended by it. It's a movie that's interesting in its merits and its flaws.