Weekend ‘Warrior’
In theaters Friday: Coriolanus, The Flowers of Ward, Haywire, Red Tails, Underworld: Awakening
New on Blu-ray/DVD: Abduction, The Ides of March
Billed as the Rocky of Mixed Martial Arts, one of 2011’s underrated masterpieces and an emotional roundhouse of a film is available now on DVD and well worth seeing.
Starring Tom Hardy (Batman’s future foe Bane in this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises) and skyrocketing Australian talent Joel Edgerton, Warrior is about a family torn apart and two estranged brothers thrown together in a battle of stamina and physical will as unlikely as it is gruesome. When Edgerton loses his teaching job and his family’s home is on the verge of foreclosure, he takes up fighting again to pay the bills. This physically damaging career change sets up a collision course with his wrecking ball brother, an AWOL marine and former undefeated high school wrestler who has returned home under an assumed identity to secretly train with his father in Mixed Martial Arts.
Without even speaking to each other both squeeze their way into a high stakes winner-take-all tournament with Hardy fighting to earn money for the struggling family of a deceased fellow marine, and Edgerton taking blows for the sake of his own wife and children.
Nick Nolte co-stars as the craggy-voiced wrestling coach father of these young men. A widower and recovered alcoholic who has found religion and stayed sober, Nolte plays this abandoned patriarch like an old sinking battleship. While he elicits little sympathy from his emotionally hardened sons, Nolte’s quiet performance and weary eyes summon all the audience empathy he needs to anchor the film. Hardy’s brooding visage and unwavering intensity is stunning, and Edgerton plays the flawed everyman-against-all-odds with grace and honesty.
As Hardy and Edgerton advance in the tournament, the question becomes not only which family will benefit, but will these men forgive each other and become real brothers again. I can’t recall the last time a movie’s emotional tension and heart-racing confrontations held me so firmly in its grip. Coiled around barreling fists, this shattered family’s lifeline is strained tight enough to snap at any moment.
The fights are fast paced, in your face affairs, of course, but so are this story’s quieter scenes, the arguments and dilemmas that boil over with unresolved anger and long-simmering resentment for past mistakes. Warrior is a thrill ride, and one that, like 2010 Oscar-winner The Fighter, adds depth and character-fueled determination to what could otherwise have been a routine boxing movie. And it is enough to make anyone holding a grudge against mom or dad or a sibling to pick up the phone and say hello—or even take a good strong punch.
