'The Fighter' review

Mark Wahlberg (Credit: JoJo Whilden/Paramount)

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Small-time boxer “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) has lived his life in the shadow of his brother and trainer Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), who became a local legend after going the distance in a bout with Sugar Ray Leonard. But Dicky’s crack addiction makes him a less than ideal professional role model, something the boys’ headstrong mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), won’t admit. When Micky falls for equally headstrong bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), he realizes he needs to reconcile his personal goals with his family’s ambitions.

The buzz: Wahlberg devoted over five years to bringing Ward’s story to the screen, at one point hoping to get his “Departed” director Martin Scorsese attached. The long road came with a lot of changes—both Brad Pitt and Matt Damon dropped out of playing Bale’s physically demanding role, and Darren Aronofsky went from director to executive producer when scheduling didn’t work out. David O. Russell ultimately wound up in the director’s chair, and it sounds like a good fit, since Wahlberg did some of his best work in Russell’s “Three Kings” and “I Heart Huckabees.”

The verdict: Wahlberg may be a driving force behind the scenes but on screen “The Fighter” gets most of its endless energy and entertainment value from his three formidable co-stars. Bale, Adams and Leo are sensational, carefully balancing broad comedy and heartbreaking humanity in a film that proves more interested in people than boxing matches. In an unconventional approach to a bio-pic, Russell downplays or doesn’t even get around to some of the biggest moments of Ward’s career. Instead, the film's focus stays on family dynamics and what it means to remember where you come from while finding your own identity. The flawed working class characters generate big laughs from their big hair, big accents and big brawls, but ultimately Russell loves them all like family. Maybe that’s why every part of the story—from Dicky’s addiction to the rivalry between Charlene and Alice to Micky’s success as a boxer—has the same funny-painful-hopeful quality that makes you feel like you’re sitting at a dinner table, listening to the raucous and warm-hearted recollections of the people who lived it.

Did you know? One of the film’s key characters—Micky’s trainer Mickey O’Keefe—is played by…the real Mickey O’Keefe. In addition to his role in the ring, O’Keefe has been a police sergeant in Lowell, Massachusetts for over 30 years.

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