Director - Gavin
O'Connor
To make a sporting movie that would hold up without the sports might
seem an unlikely feat, but O’Connor has managed just this. The writing and the
solid performances deliver a tale of a struggling blue collar family.
Wonderfully crafted so it is intrinsically relatable we have two brothers, the
older a science teacher, Edgerton, who is threatened with losing his home. The
younger brother, Hardy, returns home from Iraq, angry and full of emotions barely
contained. O’Connor sets them at odds with their recovering alcoholic father
who had torn the family apart.
The brothers take their own journey towards the ultimate goal of a
winner takes all Mixed Martial Arts contest. In Edgerton you have the
controlled, resilient underdog. In Hardy there is the raw emotional and
brutality of the dark horse. O’Connor amazingly makes you route for both
brother’s equally so by the finale you are genuinely invested in the outcome. O’Connor
uses the support cast to give Edgerton’s story arc backbone, while using snippets
of information to divulge insight into Hardy’s past as a soldier and his reasons
for fighting. But it is to the credit of the actors that fully realised and
three dimensional characters are delivered. With few words Hardy conveys
everything you need to fill in the blanks of this tormented man, his war
trauma, his guilt. For both leads the characters personalities come through in
the styles of fighting and the unison works wonders. The men appear to fight
their personal demons in the cage, adding a greater depth to their drive to
fight on and overcome. Nolte too gives a solid and memorable performance as the
father seeking forgiveness. O’Connor’s use of an audio-book of Moby Dick gives resonance to a much
darker past that haunts Nolte and drives his history of violence and alcoholism.
The fighting is visceral and believable. The action is caught in
motion, feeling like you are at once in with the fighters, watching from the
crowd and seeing the crowd’s reactions. Cutaways on moments of impact to show
the stunned expression prove equally hard hitting.
O’Connor controls what could be cliché or over sentimentalised to
deliver a solid film where the audience is invested in the outcome. Most
refreshing of all it that for a sport movie it is not about the winning, but is
more concerned with the deeper theme of family reconciliation.
Rating: 9/10
Official Trailer:
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