When a film crew started following him around his hometown, Dicky Ecklund believed that they were making a movie about his comeback. Once a promising boxer dubbed "The Pride of Lowell (Massachusetts)" for knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard in a fight, years later he helped train his upstart baby brother Micky Ward to become a great fighter himself. The truth, tragically, revealed that it was actually an HBO Films documentary crew for the series Crack in America, and their whole focus was on Dicky's troubling crack addiction. While the filming had been euphoric for Dicky, his family, and the neighborhood, the subsequent airing of the program caused a blow that resulted in a depressing shame and heartbreak.
In a way, the potential audience for The Fighter will have to endure the same crushing realization that it's not quite the brotherhood rags-to-riches underdog boxing movie that its camouflage adopts. Like all of David O. Russell's films, it's a little harder to define what it is. It's part Rocky, part Intervention, part Married with Children. It's horrifying, hilarious, uplifting, frustrating and exciting—all at once.
Ecklund's story above happened in the early 90's, the period covered by the film. It so happens that his redemption rolls down the same track as Micky's ascension. In The Fighter, Dicky is played by a truly sickly-looking Christian Bale, whose performance straddles the line between Oscar-baiting and crackhead authenticity. The end credits for The Fighter shows a brief greeting from the real-life Micky and Dicky, almost as if to prove that Bale wasn't exaggerating anything in his scene-chewing portrayal (Bale being a method actor, it's tempting to suspect that he really smoked crack for the role). Just about the only "normal" person in the ensemble is Micky. Wahlberg's timid, stone-faced turn works well for this character whose future—entire life, even—is spent being pulled around by people with stronger personalities. People who, naturally, are more cinematic than he is.
In the blue corner is his family: Dicky the charismatic brother and Alice the overbearing mother (the great Melissa Leo plays her as big and broad as one possibly could without being in a TBS sitcom). Their love for Micky is unquestionably genuine, but the way they just are is disastrous to Micky's career. In the red corner is Amy Adams, who plays Micky's real-life future wife Charlene. She's a mudflap logo come alive—a love interest who's about as deep as a tramp stamp but is nevertheless a strong female character and a great addition to the movie. She's not very smart or cultured and she's nasty to his family, but she seems to have Micky's best interest at heart.
There have been many boxing movies made, and they all approach filming the fights differently. Rocky went for hurrahs, Raging Bull went for style, Cinderella Man went for boring; The Fighter's approach is painstaking realism. Wahlberg trained for years to become a boxer—he claims that while doing his last six movies, he was prepping to play Micky Ward at the same time—and insisted that the punches should all be genuine, but choreographed to match the real fights being recreated. Russell used betamax video cameras from the period and hired the same director and TV crew of the actual fights to duplicate the footage shot-for-shot. Even the color commentaries you hear during these scenes are taken from the actual fights. The realism juxtaposes nicely with the out-of-ring drama, which are heightened and hysterical. For Micky, trading blows inside the ring is about as normal a life as he has.
David O. Russell has a very interesting career as a director. He's infamous as an uncontrollable hothead, his nasty on-set fisticuffs with George Clooney and screaming match with Lily Tomlin now stuff of Hollywood legends. Yet it's undeniable that he makes incredibly unique and timely movies. Three Kings set the bar high for wartime satire on America's foreign policy, I Heart Huckabees managed to be so ill-defined as a comedy yet so in tune with the existential mood of Post-9/11 America at the time, so it would be wise to assume that his boxing movie isn't just a Rocky retread. While Stallone's classic romanticizes the blue collar, creating this underdog working class hero who's immediately clear to the audience that he deserves to climb upwards, The Fighter is a lot less sentimental about Micky Ward's humble beginnings.
There's a dirty sense of opportunism and misplaced loyalty in the way the film paints Micky's family, where all that "family stick together" mantra often found in stories of working class hardship like this is turned on its head. On surface level, the gum-chewing Maah-sah-chusetts caricature that is Micky's family is wildly over-the-top, especially for a drama that purports to be serious, but it's also what makes the family interactions so rich and alive. There's a tiny moment, when Dicky's upset and starts punching lockers in the locker room—it's a cliched moment seen in many movies with masculine protagonists—and the camera pans over to Dicky's boy, watching his father, then follows the toddler as he starts punching a locker too. It's heartfelt and disturbing, and it feels real. The consequences of everyone's actions feel considered, which is a great sign for a story like this.
As the boxing stuff fades into the nosebleed section and the family drama moves ringside, it's those little character details and headbutting dynamic that makes The Fighter another unique David O. Russell film.
"The Fighter" opens December 10, 2010 and is rated R. Biopic, Drama, Sports. Directed by David O Russell. Written by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson. Starring Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, Melissa Leo, Jack McGee.
