The Fighter Review

All bets are in and if the Golden Globes are any indication, I the critic should not stand a single round against this welterweight biopic.

The Fighter

Directed by Chuck O. Russell

Based on a true story – presumably not the one where George Clooney punches him. Google it.

Ding Ding. Okay I’ve seen it now.

Distilled from the biographies of two professional boxers, The Fighter delivers on the genre promises of a sports movie by chronicling its under dog hero to triumphant against-the-odds success. Set in the working class town of Lowell , 1993, Mark Wahlberg plays Micky Ward, a boxer trying to escape the shadow of his half-brother Dicky Eklund, an almost-champion who is regarded as the ‘pride of Lowell’. He is managed by his domineering mother and a bitchy chorus seven sisters, all of whom curse when he brings Charlene the sexy bartender home, who insists he abandon his family in favour of new trainers and management.

In a short and innocent, single-entendre summation, The Figher is the story of a boxer with too many fists in his ring.

Wahlberg is stoic as Ward, and when set against Christian Bale’s yammering and giddy Eklund, affecting comedy ensues. Amy Adams accents her obligatory love interest with good charm even in her foullest lines – and there are many. Not so much a gripe, but an observation – it is bizarre to see Christian Bale outside of a blockbuster these days, bizarre-r in a supporting role, but to see him as a balding drug-addled ADHD-afflicted has-been, seems downright insane. He brought great humanity to the character, and isn’t obliged to front franchises all the time, but one can’t help but wonder if this role shouldn’t have gone to unknown to complement the ‘found’ sense of this world.

But I digress.

Russell’s camera is decided doco-style, adding emphasis to the true-story element. A sub-plot involves a film crew documenting Bale’s character, and the footage thereof is often a resort in times of exposition. Russell plays with many post-modern meta fiddlings, including splitscreening the credits with interviews with the real Micky and Dicky. When worlds collide.

Besides the comfortable acting and improvisational camera, this film should be exalted for following by-the-book the rules of a sports movie, and from within those trappings, exploring keenly it’s characters and themes. In contrast to, for example, Clint Eastwood’s otherwise shiny Invictus, which dwelt endlessly in slow motion on that final match we all knew the outcome of, The Fighter spends a good while reconciling it’s disparate sub-plots before getting to that final fight. What results is a solid understanding of Lowell, the working class environment and problems associated with crime and drugs. We come to sympathise with even those who antagonise our hero, so when we get to that necessary title match, we need to see him win.

The Fighter is a film that is solid in performance and direction, but it’s script is a delicate tapestry of plotting that should knock you out. It is well worth the ticket that I did not have to pay for.

But you should.

Yawn. Nightmare on E --zzzz.

Arching now in the armchair with my shoes off, feet up. I am staring through a gauze of expectation onto a small screen. There at that murky middle, a covenant is established.

I will believe that the characters are not played by actors but are human beings. I will assume that all the light is as it would be without intervention, and accept that in no way do speakers play a part between the sound and my ears. All I want in return is a decent dollop of truth.

Even if that truth is a faint and desperate call for help from under a now demolished soundstage, I still want it.

Tonight is a set menu – this isn’t television. Walking down the spooky boulevard, past Boris Karloff and his monster. Ignore imitations, unscrupulous nostalgia merchants and plagiarists with permits that go by street names like ‘prequel’, or ‘reboot’. Sideshow of psychic CPR. The Exorcist will wear his Oscar on the mantlepiece but you'll notice that there are no photos of his kids – they skipped school and went straight to DVD.

Look down into the underground bar. Sam is chasing Bruce with a handheld camera. Windows have been broken. The crowd isn’t sure whether to laugh or scream but they'd better keep it down. Steven King owns the theatre upstairs and it is always open.

Pass the corner of Sci Fi lane. See stargazers recount meetings with Ridley Scott and James Cameron. Over the bridge is Romero’s excavated cemetery but… I’ve got enough here for now.

Arriving at the hotel where I will sleep. It consists of nine stories although the eighth has a permanent resident named Voorhees, and above that is a space occupied by hookers. But I’m on the first floor, opened in 1984. Closing the windows and wedding the curtains.

It’s safe to assume that, whatever the noise, it’s not anything that lives inside these walls and – all that stuff about the full moon, not true, izzit?

PREPARE for the exhileration, the trepidation, and the ickly prickly nape.

A Review

Nightmare on Elm Street

Written and Directed by Wes Craven

Released 1984.

Yawn. I’m knackered. Not sure if I’ll see the end…

The Next Day.

Note : Johnny Depp plays a not eccentric person in this movie.

Fred Krueger was lynched for the murder of twenty children after the justice system crumbled on a petty technicality. As any child-killer does after an unfair execution, Freddy returns to take revenge, targeting the teenage children of the mob. He does this in their dreams – that is to say, they go to sleep, he cuts them with razors attached to his horribly burnt finger, and the cuts manifest in reality.

Great set-up huh?

For those of you who’ve been living in a cave, bomb-shelter, or coma (or just don’t care – fair enough), ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ is already a horror/slasher classic, and deservingly so. Regard its villain, a charismatic boogeyman in stripes of blood red and bile green, bladed gloves, while still having the decency to hide his fire-scarred face in the shadow of a gentlemanly fedora. I’ll follow him into a sequel anyday.

Agreeable characterisation is also found in our protagonist, Nancy, convincingly portrayed by Heather Langenkamp. She takes us on an arc from helpless victim to resourceful heroine, that, while a little off-the-shelf, is nonetheless competent. And as a special holiday treat, the film refrains from revealing that Nancy is the protagonist until the end of the first act :

The film begins with a close-up sequence of Freddy sculpting his evil gloves, after thiswe enjoy a chase sequence – a dream. Tina is the helpless figure trying to escape in his labyrinthine boiler room lair. It is a wonderful construction that Tina is allowed to die bloodily and surprisingly at the end of the first act, so that our empathy can shuffle over to the much more worthy Nancy. Within seconds of her visit to the dreamscape Nancy is able to yell out the notion that will eventually save the day

It Is Just a Dream.

And so she takes the torch.

Craven’s camera shows restraint but gets decidedly excited when Freddy’s in the room. It plays nicely with a deliriously dated synth score. What is most striking though is the lighting, the stark contrast between the dark and gloomy nightmare world and that of the sunlit suburban streets. The dream world is that much more terrifying when set against the security of a good and honest neighbourhood.

Of course, it isn’t all that good and honest. Thematically, the film intends to open all the closets of the American Shangri-La, and put the skeletons out to decompose. Nancy’s mother, her drinking problem, her dark secret, her clinical disbelieving approach to her daughter’s problems, argue that even behind the American dream curtain, there are nightmares lurking, and they will always haunt us if we don’t face them.

Nancy’s mother tells her “you face things. It’s your nature. Your gift. And that is why, thanking good screenwriting, she survives the film. (Or almost, but that’s another grumpier paragraph). These themes of course don’t hit you over the head, but they do make you feel better about being manipulated into gasping at regular intervals.

And yes this satisfies my pompous standard of ‘truth’ and I’ll class the film as good, despite the following :

I like horror films for the portrayal of people first and stars second (try killing Johnny off in a film nowadays). I love that horror allows villains the limelight. I do not love horror for throwaway endings. Is it really that necessary for the monster to come back and negate everything that’s happened? Really?

(Apparently two endings were shot, the latter ‘twist’ ending is what made it into the film, against the will of Craven who’d leave the franchise for a while. Sigh)

A few other gripes include some logic leaps. Why, pray, does Nancy actually go to school after being used as bait to lure Rod into a police trap. And does Nancy’s dad actually believe her about Krueger, after seeing him ENVELOPED BY A BEDSHEET? Oh, and that sleep Doctor and his obligatory romanticising of dreams?

I guess technically most of the movie was just an elaborate nightmare, so I’m forgiving. It is an engaging well constructed film and a great opening to what would become a successful franchise overall. There are certainly enough chills and thrills, and you can press play in the knowledge that a small dose of pop philosophy will keep your intellect from dribbling out your nose.

Go! To the Blockbuster. If you can find one.

Itunes?