{"id":5914,"date":"2011-03-13T22:48:15","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T02:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/?p=5914"},"modified":"2011-03-13T22:48:15","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T02:48:15","slug":"the-fighter-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/2011\/03\/13\/the-fighter-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fighter&#8211;Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/image\/stars\/4o5.gif\" alt=\"4 Stars\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0964517\/\"><em>The Fighter<\/em><\/a> is still playing in some theaters thanks to the Oscars won by Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, so I was able to finally get around to seeing it this weekend. It turned out to be funnier than I expected. It actually could qualify as a rather dark comedy about a close-knit but dysfunctional family.<\/p>\n<p>This is a biopic based loosely on the life of boxer &#8220;Irish&#8221; Micky Ward, but the central character is arguably his older half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Dicky is a former boxer, once a local hero but now a washed-up crack addict. He devotes his sober moments to &#8220;training&#8221; Micky (Mark Wahlberg) who is trying to make a career as a professional boxer. Micky is &#8220;managed&#8221; by their mother Alice (Melissa Leo). I&#8217;m using the quotes because under their tutelage Micky&#8217;s careers seems likely to be short and painful.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nMicky seems like a nice boy, goodhearted if none too bright. He loves his brother and does what his mother tells him. Alice seems like a real piece of work. Manipulative and delusional, she worships Dicky and seems to think of Micky as a spear-carrier on Dicky&#8217;s path to glory.<\/p>\n<p>Things start to look up for Micky when he meets Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams). She&#8217;s a college drop-out who is working as a barmaid and doesn&#8217;t seem to have accomplished anything with her life, but she&#8217;s smart and tough as nails, and she radiates a fierce working-class sexuality that makes her hold on Micky easy to believe.<\/p>\n<p>Under her influence Micky starts to stand up for himself and question his mother and brother. This of course leads to a firestorm of recriminations which causes Micky a great deal of grief. He doesn&#8217;t want to be taken advantage of but he genuinely loves his family.<\/p>\n<p>This sort of biopic is pretty much required to have a climactic championship match and a poignant happy ending. There are no surprises here. Where this movie excels is in the quality of the acting and in the wit and irony of the writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fighter is still playing in some theaters thanks to the Oscars won by Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, so I was able to finally get around to seeing it&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/2011\/03\/13\/the-fighter-movie-review\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[419],"class_list":["post-5914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-the-fighter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5914"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5921,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914\/revisions\/5921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}