WARRIOR

From director/writer Gavin O’Connor, who broke out with 2004’s critically acclaimed ‘Miracle’, comes ‘Warrior’, the story of an estranged pair of brothers and their alcoholic father reuniting for a MMA super-tournament.  

Fourteen years after he and his mother moved across the country, Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) returns to his hometown of Pittsburg to train for “Sparta”, a winner-take-all MMA playoff format tournament with a five million dollar purse.  After returning, Tommy reaches out to his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), to help him train, claiming it was the “one thing” he was ever good at.  Miles away in Philadelphia, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), Tommy’s older brother (who stayed behind with his father and girlfriend), is a high school physics teacher struggling to pay the bills.  Brendan, being an ex-MMA fighter himself, begins to fight in small venues looking for extra cash, but when he learns of “Sparta” he employs the help of an old friend to help him train.  By sheer movie magic luck, both brothers find ways of entering the 16 man tournament in Atlantic City.  The two men begin a collision course towards fighting not only in the cage, but also the forces that tore their family apart.

From the onset one can’t help but notice the typical sports/fighting movie clichés.  Without seeing the film it would be a safe assumption to say ‘Warrior’ was banking on a combination sports underdog-MMA craze hybrid to be highly marketable (this is a smart move on Lionsgate’s part).  But, as ‘The Wrestler’ and ‘The Fighter’ have done in recent years, ‘Warrior’ overcomes the predictability with outstanding performances and a strong script.

Both leads, Hardy and Edgerton, do fantastic jobs of using their characters’ pasts as catalysts for their every word and movement.  Hardy using a short leashed rage to mask his despair from losing his mother and best friend (who he claims is his real brother) in the marines, and Edgerton perfectly blending the vulnerability of a back-against-the-wall family man and the drive and ferocity needed to protect them.  Overshadowing them however is Nolte.  Nolte’s dreary eyed, post alcoholic Paddy, trying everything he can to reconnect with his sons, is nowhere short of mesmerizing.  Every tear filled stutter that rolls off his tongue doubles as an axe to the audiences’ heartstrings.  In a momentary hop off the wagon Nolte, in a drunken frantic recitation of lines from Melville’s Moby Dick, may just have his scene that stamps his ticket to the Oscars.

O’Connor does well to not fall too far into the sentimental, choosing to let the actors create the tone and emotion with the expressions rather than overloading the dialogue.  O’Connor also uses classic show-not-tell writing to enhance the characters’ motivation; letting events uncovered later in the film explain actions and reactions from earlier in the story.  Other than the unavoidable clichés and minor pacing problems (mainly stemming from the training montage leading up to “Sparta”), O’Connor does an excellent job keeping the script compact in relation to the amount of story lines needed to give the plot closure.

A film that could’ve easily drifted to the overtly cliché and sentimental, ‘Warrior’ rises above and creates a world where we not only want to root for the underdog(s), but genuinely care about this family and want to see some sort of reconciliation, however tainted it may be.

GRADE: B+

OSCAR CHANCES:

Best Picture: Possible

Best Original Screenplay (O’Connor): Long Shot

Best Actor (Hardy or Edgerton): Long Shot

Best Supporting Actor (Nolte): Highly Likely