A mediocre cover of a great song. Russell has clearly seen a fair few docudramas and films shot in an improvisational, on-the-fly style, but
The Fighter's efforts to reach beyond its sports-movie trappings are hampered by the lack of good character work and the deeply conventional story. Mickey Ward's pack of hysterical, white-trash sisters are not given humanity or empathy in any way, while the Oscar-winners of the cast (Melissa Leo and Christian Bale), though obviously committed to their roles, descend all too often into cartoonish, broad humor and facile stereotypes. Bale had the same problem with wide-eyed, comical attempts at earnestness in his previous weight-loss spectacular
The Machinist. The fighting scenes suffer from what I'll call
Friday Night Lights syndrome...while I'm a big, big fan of the show, the matches often take a predictable pattern of our heroes getting beaten badly in the first half, then coming back strongly and inexplicably to win the day. There's no drama at all in these fights, or in Mickey's personal life. A wasted film with a lot of potential.
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