Family—you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.
Mark Wahlberg’s new film, The Fighter, is about boxing. But at its heart, this movie is less about what happens inside the ring and more about what happens outside the ring within the Ecklund/Ward family.
Wahlberg plays Micky Ward, a journeyman fighter who has spent his lifetime in the shadow of his half brother, Dicky Ecklund, played by Christian Bale. Dicky’s claim to fame is lasting longer than most did in the ring against world champion Sugar Ray Leonard, who has a cameo in the film. Dicky’s time as “The Pride of Lowell,” the gritty blue-collar town in Massachusetts where the family lives, is over. He is now a crack addict. (An HBO crew is in Lowell interviewing Dicky, not about his life as a fighter, but about his descent into drug abuse). When he is not high and can remember what day it is, he makes it to the gym to help train his brother, the family’s last shot at a title.
Alice, the boys’ mother, serves as Micky’s manager. With her tough-talking, ballsy performance, Melissa Leo proves her last Academy Award nomination wasn’t a fluke, nor is it likely to be her last. Smoking nonstop, her blond hair teased and sprayed, Alice rules the roost, calling the shots for Micky’s career, making excuses for Dicky’s behavior, and marginalizing her husband, George Ward, played by veteran actor Jack McGee. Alice’s brood also includes seven daughters who serve as a Greek chorus, backing up their mother’s agenda. Alice’s goal is to win that title at all costs, even if it means putting Micky at risk.
Coming off several losses, Micky finally has a chance to start winning. The match he is expecting, against a lesser competitor, is changed at the last minute. Micky finds himself facing a fighter who has more than 20 pounds on him. Neither his mother nor his brother, however, will allow him to back out. He looses—badly.
Micky begins to view his family through the eyes of his girlfriend, Charlene, played by Amy Adams, and he doesn’t like what he sees. When Dicky is arrested and sent to prison, Micky takes on a new trainer and fires his mother as his manager. Finally, he begins to win.
Alice is tenacious, unwilling to throw in the towel on either of her sons. She is the real fighter in the film, although she often swings at the wrong person. When Dicky is released from prison and shows up at the gym, Micky initially refuses to let his brother and mother back into his life.
The scenes that follow could have been featured on Dr. Phil as the various family members fight, retreat to their corners, and fight again. While Micky knows taking his family back is a risk, he knows he can’t win without them.
Those who have struggled with family issues (who hasn’t?) will recognize their own history in this film. Can a mother love all her children equally? What happens when a parent becomes too invested in a child’s success? Is it possible for siblings to compete without becoming rivals? Does an outsider ever truly become “family”?
If the fight scenes in the film seem real, that’s because they were filmed that way. On 60 Minutes, Wahlberg talked about the physicality involved with making The Fighter. Some of that blood and those bruises are for real. Micky can take the physical blows, but the emotional hits are the ones that really hurt. When he pleads with his mother, asking if she really loves him, his agony matches anything he has ever withstood in the ring. Much has been written lately about Wahlberg’s success as a producer (Entourage and Boardwalk Empire, among his shows), but he is making his mark as an actor, too. This is a powerful performance.
Christian Bale is virtually unrecognizable, having lost considerable weight for the role of Dicky. He shakes and twitches, grinding his teeth, his eyes constantly darting around. He manages to make Dicky repulsive and sympathetic at the same time.
Boxing is a popular theme in films—On the Waterfront, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby, and of course, the Rocky films, used fighting as both a mechanism for telling a story and a metaphor for struggling through life. The Fighter is based on a true story, so the fairytale ending really happened, in the ring and, from the way the real Dicky and Micky are shown laughing together while the credits run, perhaps in the family, too.
