Dir. Gavin O’Connor , USA , 2011, 140mins,
Cast: Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte, Kevin Dunn
Review by Matthew Rodgers
This UFC themed skew on the sports movie genre is a frustrating one-two combination of twenty odd minutes of superb, Shakespearean, caged based smack downs, as family dynamics are played out in a feral amphitheatre, that are ultimately handicapped by sub-genre clichés that fail to pick it up from the seen-it-all-before canvas.
Returning home from Iraq, Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) is reluctantly reunited with his reformed alcoholic father (Nick Nolte), an absentee patriarch that he blames for his rough single-parent upbringing. In the opposite corner of the family is Brendan (Joel Edgerton), the brother who has put aside his troubled upbringing to raise a white-picket fence family despite the growing financial strains. Both siblings see entry into an upcoming UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) tournament named SPARTA as a chance to right their own wrongs.
Warrior is telegraphed from the sound of the first bell; two brothers as underdogs fighting in a life-changing tournament. It’s not difficult to see who’ll end up squaring off for the riches, is it? Ordinarily that kind of predictability would be a problem, but O’Connor’s film has two things going for it; the relatively untapped sport is fresh in terms of mainstream exposure, and Tom Hardy is white hot after Inception and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Sadly, both aspects are major disappointments. UFC, which is a mixed martial arts form of competition, is clearly a brutal sport, but the filmmakers, intent on targeting the key demographic of teenage boys, strictly adhere to the 12A-rating and as a result the intended harshness of the bouts is lost in a haze of ESPN promo reel presentation and extended grappling.
Hardy’s bruiser is given very little in the way of charisma or personality; Tommy is a skulking brute, and Hardy’s exaggerated physique (surely in prep for his forthcoming turn in The Dark Knight Rises ) consumes the screen with intimidating results, but without much beneath the hulking muscles, we have very little in the way of empathy to make his cathartic journey strike a chord with the audience.
It is therefore down to Edgerton to provide us with the accessible arc, the most likeable member of a majorly dysfunctional family, and recognisable to most as Uncle Owen from the Star Wars prequels. It is perhaps not an outstanding turn but enough to make you stick with the indulgent, two-hour plus running time and have someone to cheer on.
Void of anything resembling a signature look, the direction is lacking any flair: a must when it comes to fighting movies. Look at what Scorsese did with Raging Bull or Mann did with Ali . The plot is full of contrivances (oh, the two estranged brothers just happen to be walking along the same beach, do they?) and only very rarely grips during the final exchanges.
If the Rocky franchise is the heavyweight champion that others are happy to compare this to, and The Wrestler is its closest forbearer, then Warrior is little more than a light-middleweight contender for the crown.
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