People keep asking me about The Fighter and how much I liked it. I can see that this is a crowd-pleasing film much like The Town so my opinion probably isn't going to go very far.
I will start by saying I have no idea why this film is a frontrunner for winning a Best Picture Oscar. It's clearly an actor's film and the acting from Bale is very good. The acting from Adams and Leo is good too. Wahlberg, however, delivers Micky Ward as one of the blandest sports stars ever. He just didn't seem to have much of a personality. I know he is supposed to be overpowered by a clan of crazy sisters, a control-freak mother, and drug-addicted brother, but there wasn't even a subtle charm there. At least for me anyway.
There's a lot of fighting both in the ring and to have a voice, and subsequently it comes off a little whiny. The exception is a crack-addicted Dicky Ecklund struggling to stay out of prison, restart a never-going-to-happen-again career, and care for a son. His outlook is grim and his body is skeletal, but there's enough heart there to hope he will get a second and third chance. It saddens the core of his mother who is forced to push the reality of his life out of mind in order to keep going. The best of the story lies here. I could have watched Bale all day, Wahlberg... not so much.
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