www.list.co.uk/film
BIOPIC/SPORT THE FIGHTER (15) 115min ●●●●●
All the best boxing movies are as much about what goes on outside the ring as what happens inside the ropes. Despite this biopic, scripted by Scott Silver (8 Mile) and five other writers, being based on the lives of not one but two pugilists, half-brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, director David O Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees) is more interested in the latter than the former. And that’s what makes the film a winner – and a contender for no less than seven Oscars at the forthcoming Academy Awards. For those unfamiliar with Ward and Eklund, the half-
brothers fought their way up from a white trash neighbourhood in Lowell, Massachusetts during the 1980s. The elder of the two, Dicky (Christian Bale), was the first to achieve notoriety when he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. His career, however, foundered – he became addicted to crack and eventually ended up serving time in prison. Micky (Mark Wahlberg), by contrast, was a slow starter whose own boxing career eventually took off and saw him become the world welterweight champion and the most televised boxer in sports history.
Neatly contrasting Micky’s ascent with Dicky’s descent, the film locates the source of their trials and tribulations firmly within the family – Dicky is idolised by their overbearing mother and manager Alice (Melissa Leo) while Micky is badly managed by her and poorly-trained by his crack-head brother. The chaotic scenes of domestic dysfunction, which also involve half a dozen harpy-like sisters and an eternally exasperated father, are both hilarious and touching. It’s not hard to see the influence of O Russell’s earlier domestic black comedies, Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, and the blistering rows prove to be as bruising as anything we see in the ring. They also showcase some seriously good performances, from the women in the story, from Leo, and, playing Micky’s smart-mouthed girlfriend, Amy Adams, and equally from Wahlberg and Bale, who work well together giving, respectively, pleasingly low-key and larger- than-life turns.
Comparisons with another underdog sports movie, The Wrestler, are inevitable and not unfair. Probably not coincidentally, that film’s director, Darren Aronofsky, is one of the producers of The Fighter. (Miles Fielder) ■ General release from Fri 4 Feb.
REVIEWS Film
DRAMA/THRILLER BRIGHTON ROCK (15) 111min ●●●●●
Remaking a seminal British crime film might seem like madness, but then writer-director Rowan Joffe has ignored the 1947 original and instead gone back to Graham Greene’s source novel. And having done that, he’s ditched its 1938 setting to update the seafront action to 1964. It’s a bold move, but one that’s paid off. On the one hand, the new film more explicitly engages with elements of the novel sidelined in the first film – the religious theme, its grubby sexual and violent content – and on the other, it finds a perfect context for the story of the rise and fall of a teenage gangster in the youth revolt of the early-60s embodied by the mods’n’rockers riots in Brighton.
At the heart of the story is the
doomed, sadomasochistic romance between small-time hood Pinkie (Control’s Sam Riley) and waitress Rose (Andrea Riseborough). It’s a tricky relationship to make believable, but the combination of the debilitating Catholic guilt shared by the lovers and the youthful revolt that spurns them on keeps it convincing, and it’s neatly mirrored by the more straightforward relationship between old lags Helen Mirren and John Hurt, playing, respectively, prostitute and bookie. Joffe, who established himself as a decent and versatile scriptwriter with 28 Weeks Later, The American and Glasgow-set thriller Gas Attack, contrasts the story’s grimy underworld setting with Brighton’s seaside glitz, and gives the whole thing a grand cinematic sweep with nods towards Get Carter, Quadrophenia and Jean- Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï. (Miles Fielder) ■ General release from Fri 4 Jan.
DRAMA RABBIT HOLE (12A) 90min ●●●●●
On the surface, Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell’s third feature Rabbit Hole has all the hallmarks of a forgettable television movie grappling with a familiar storyline: a young middle-class couple grieving the loss of their son. Yet, through excellent writing and memorable performances, the film emerges as a surprisingly moving and honest portrayal of a family in grief.
Rabbit Hole begins with images of what appear to be suburban bliss: Becca Corbett (Nicole Kidman) lovingly tends to the garden outside her beautiful home before preparing dinner for husband Howie (Aaron Eckhart). However, in the scenes that follow, as they meet and chat with family and friends, it soon emerges that this is a couple struggling to hold things together.
David Lindsay-Abaire’s screenplay, adapted from his play, is the film’s real
strength. Thoughtful characterisation and engaging dialogue give Rabbit Hole believable characters whose actions are understandable. Refreshingly too, the emotional response that Rabbit Hole engenders comes through honesty and tenderness rather than melodrama. In particular in the scenes between Kidman and the young Miles Teller which subtly capture a mix of sorrow, regret and hope for the future. (Gail Tolley) ■ Selected release from Fri 4 Feb.
3–17 Feb 2011 THE LIST 51