When it comes to films about sports I'm fairly indifferent. If the character is
interesting then I'm interested. In regards to boxing, my knowledge is about as
limited as a boxers knowledge is on just about anything else. I'm not saying
they're unintelligent but if my job was to be punched in the face all day then
I'd probably wish I'd worked a little harder at school. However, despite my
ignorance on the subject I can still appreciate that Raging Bull is a
masterpiece. Rather than looking at the ear biting game, the film focuses more
on the rage within the character and his high cholesterol levels of self
destruction. The opposite of this is of course Rocky which features a
character so dull it falls into Stallone’s acting range. Back in 1980, De Niro
was the worlds greatest actor, whereas Stallone's thespian abilities ranged
sadly somewhere between a charity shop anorak and a rotting cupboard door.
Warrior was
a 2011 film which focuses on a sport known as mixed martial arts. I say sport
but clearly I mean organised homicide as the game simply consists of two men smashing the living fuck out of each
other. It's kind of like watching a post happy-hour punch up if you replaced
Bacardi Breezers with knob shrivelling steroids. Before this film I knew very
little about the sport and after having watched it, I'm still fairly in the
dark. Despite being hugely brutal, it also seems massively homoerotic with
stripped down men sweating and moaning as they pin each other to the floor.
From what I can gather, it's a bit like wrestling, only real, and where the
only illegal move is full on anal penetration.
The story of Warrior is fairly basic
with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton being two brothers fighting in the same
tournament. Their father is played by an ageing Nick Nolte who has physically
altered so much that he's starting to look like someone has attempted to carve
him out of the great Deku Tree’s ball sack. His voice too has gotten even odder
so that he now genuinely sounds like an angry cat having it balls trimmed with a cheese grater. I
honestly can't understand a word he says but I love him none the less. Why
learn the lines when you can simply express the emotion through the guise of a
severely abused feline?
Of the three main characters, each of them
have their issues. Hardy is filled with rage having watched his mother die of
cancer. Edgerton has a family to care for and more bills than he can afford to
pay. Nolte is a recovering alcoholic who hasn't seen his kids in years and used
to indulge in a little domestic abuse. Basically they're just your average
happy family like the Waltons or the Friedmans. Where once the white picket
fence was a sign of peaceful suburban life, it's nowadays just another piece of
wood to hit someone in the face with. Anybody will tell you that the best way
to rekindle a past relationship is to get them into a metal cage and repeatedly
kick them in the face until you feel better. The film is therefore about the
progress of their sporting endeavour but also the potential reconnection of a
broken home.
Although physical violence and a damaged
home life might make it sound like a well cast episode of the Jerry Springer
show, this is actually really good. Narratively Warrior follows the
tried and tested underdog story laid out in that brain-dead, fighting chimps Rocky
franchise. It might sound clichéd to compare a sports movie to Rocky but
fuck it, it's also clichéd to tell a story of an underdog fighting his way
through a tournament and reaching the final against the odds. What Warrior does
to counter this is tell two underdog stories at once. Kind of like Rocky 3 if
Clubber Lang had been a puny kid from the slums instead of the walking slab of
blinged up irony that is Mr T.
It seems that the two brothers are both
representative of America’s current middle-class scars. Hardy is a man haunted
by war and Edgerton is a good man crippled by the recession. The fact that they
both conveniently enter the same tournament is massively contrived and
unfortunately a major distraction throughout. The crux of the story is hinged
on a huge coincidence which just seems a little unbelievable. However it's easy
to get over this fact by simply concentrating on the performances and the
action.
As performances go, the two brothers are
brilliant- if Bronson has taught us anything about Hardy it's that he's
very good at being both theatrical and camp. He also has a bizarre, chewed up
looking cock. However here, everything is underplayed with his Warrior performance
being an uncharismatic husk of Britain's most notorious nudist/prisoner. If his
character is more reserved however, his physique is still massively eye
catching. People are impressed by De Niro putting on weight but that's piss
easy. Give me a takeaway menu and a big bag of marijuana and I'll put that load
on in three days tops. However, to become the muscle machine that Hardy does is
something else completely. I jogged for two minutes once before convincing
myself I'd popped a lung therefore Hardy must have faked it. I don't know how-
maybe CG.
Edgerton too is brilliant as the more
likeable of Nolte's sons. Before this, the only thing I'd seen Uncle Owen in
was obviously the Star Wars Prequels and the Australian slab of genius
that is Animal Kingdom. Considering that Animal Kingdom is one of
the most original gangster films of all time I'd be interested to see anything
else that the people involved with it have done. Edgerton here is more
thoughtful than Hardy and so uses techniques and endurance to win the matches.
Hardy on the other hand simply punches people in the face with his metal hands
of fury and then fucks off back to the changing rooms for a little rage off. In
effect what you have with Warrior is like one of those old school movie
cross overs. Whereas in the past there was Dracula vs Frankenstein or King
Kong vs Godzilla we know have Jake La Motta vs Rocky Balboa. For
other original genre cross overs I look forward to the peado-riffic Hanna vs
Hitgirl and the sparklingly satisfying Edward Cullen vs Blade.
The action in Warrior is suitably
brutal for a film about cage fighting. When punches connect, they seem
convincingly real but always in a cinematic and satisfying way. The scraps in The
Wrestler were both physically and emotionally painful as we watched an old man
slice his head with a razor for his fans’ approval. Here however, each attack
was clearly played with the intent of upping the audience’s adrenaline. As
guilty pleasures go the only thing they could have done to make it more crowd
pleasing would be to include a to the death match between Hardy and Wolverine.
It's a film starring Bane, Hulks Dad and Uncle Owen, why not include a man with
knives in his hands? Fuck it, I'd pay to see that more than I would any film in
which the mentally and physically deformed star repeatedly shouts “Adrienne”
like a deranged howler monkey.
In conclusion, Warrior is a
brilliantly executed film that rises above its genre clichés to be genuinely
entertaining. Yes, we know what's going to happen each step of the way but at
least we don't know which of the two underdogs will eventually win. Although I
still can't say I'm a fan of sports, it is good to know there's one out there
which is basically just two men stamping on each other’s heads. I don't want to
sound sadistic but maybe I could be lured to watching that one if they
introduced weapons too. Nothing too dangerous- just maces, clubs, nets and
chariots. Basically the only sport I'd be interested in is Gladiator fighting
with mixed martial arts. Throw a tiger onto a football pitch and suddenly
you've got a game worth watching.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
