It’s been interesting watching the rise of MMA. What began as something that felt like a fringe sport, ha slowly but steadily climbed to become big business with a huge fan base. On UFC fight nights here in Toronto, I routinely see clusters of people gathered outside of bars watching the pay-per-view footage through the windows. It’s a sport that seems ripe to be the inspiration for a great film.

Sadly, after WARRIOR, that ripe fruit is still waiting to be picked.

WARRIOR is about two men who both happen to be good MMA fighters. One is Tommy (Tom Hardy), a loner who mysteriously returns to his home town and becomes a legend at a local gym after he hands a contender training there an unexpected smackdown. The other is Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a high school science teacher who has a young daughter with his wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison). They are so deeply behind on their bills, that Brendan fights in amateur MMA competitions at night behind his wife’s back.

Oh, I probably should have mentioned that Tommy and Brendan are brothers.

Both Tommy and Brendan enter a pro MMA tournament with a $5M payday. I’ll give you three guesses how the tournament shakes down, and your first two guesses don’t count.

That might be WARRIOR’s greatest sin, the fact that it is so. truly. predictable.  I have nothing against a stripe of predictability in movies – especially sports movies – as long as they can execute and entertain along the way. However, WARRIOR seems to discard any notions of having fun after the first thirty minutes, and can’t even do us the courtesy of constructing a decent training montage.

Further down the avenue of missed opportunities is the character traits given to Tommy. The guy is supposed to be a big time badass, a guy capable of pulling a door off its hinges. However, whenever he fights, his fighting style means most of his matches are over in twenty seconds or less. You’d think that a filmmaker who puts a guy who plays a tough guy as well as Hardy does would let him off the leash for more time than it takes to microwave a bag of popcorn…but sadly no.

What led me to watch this movie, which obviously isn’t my usual speed, was the Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Nick Nolte. Nolte, I’m sad to say, represents yet another detail that the film got so wrong. He plays the patriarch, and begins to do so with the saddened grizzle of a recovering alcoholic. At first glance, he appears to be earning his bones by playing a shell of himself. But before too long, his role also turns to caricature and predictability.

In the face of all of this, I must ask “why?”. Why not take advantage of a sport’s popularity and make a film about it that executes? It doesn’t have to reinvent anything, just give us an storyline that doesn’t insult and make sure that the fight scenes are the main attraction. Sadly though, neither will be found in WARRIOR. All that you will find is a half-decent showing by TOM HARDY, and a story that you will see coming down Broadway.

The good news is that MMA’s popularity doesn’t seem to be waning anytime soon. Perhaps a better movie about it is still on its way.

18 Replies to “WARRIOR”

  1. I found this to be harmless, but well intended and diverting for the most part. The story is somewhat tired but all the actors try hard (for example, Morrison who the script has no interest tries so much). For me, what does it in is the bizarre photography and editing choices, and what saves it for me is the fine performance from Joel Edgerton.

    1. That odd photography and editing you mention seems to go into overdrive in the final few matches, which really kept shaking me out of the film. Much as I’m not a fan of the sport, MMA deserves a better modern movie than this. “Harmless” isn’t good enough.

  2. And…we disagree.

    Like you, I wasn’t interested in the film when it first came out, but watched it towards the end of 2011 because a number of people said it was far better than they expected it to be. I found both the brother characters to be well-drawn and very well acted by both Hardy and Edgerton and the story to be solidly engaging. Yeah, I knew where it was going, but I don’t think it ever pretends to hide that. What it did was execute the obvious in, what I felt to be, a well-paced, interesting way. I would’ve actually been disappointed if it had NOT ended in its predictable place. On top of that, the very end (ie. the actual outcome) was not as obvious.

    I’m not a fan of MMA, but am certainly impressed by the power and agility of its athletes. I found the fight scenes (though obviously not as realistic as say a Soderbergh version might be) to be quite excellent at getting across the strength and the different moves, etc. I’m a bit surprised at your take on Tommy in the ring – the short duration of his matches make perfect sense. He doesn’t actually want to be doing this and his badassness allows him to be in and out as quick as possible (hence his immediate departure from the ring after a fight is finished). You wanted a film about MMA, but this is a film about these two characters…

    Where I do agree with you is in regards to Nick Nolte. Didn’t really like his scenes much at all (and I like Nolte generally), in particular the one that probably got him the nomination – that final Moby Dick reading. I found his scenes dragged the film down (and it is a bit longish) and were simply dull.

    The rest was a surprise for me – a very good one.

  3. Huh. I just randomly decided to throw out a review of this the other day (tend to completely ignore most things watched at home). I had absolutely zero expectations for the film and, honestly, even dozed off for a couple minutes in the first half (long day). While everything pointed towards an MMA-altered ‘boxing’ film and quite a bit was rather predictable, when I snapped myself out of my exhaustion coma I became surprisingly engaged in the on-screen action…particularly the fight scenes. I’d actually echo what Bob says, Tommy’s short fight sequences were an attraction in and of themselves. We needed to see that no-nonsense brutality, that sort of complete lack of emotion in order to understand what’s at stake when the brothers go up against one another. Plus: they were kind of just plain bad ass.

    I was pleasantly surprised, but will agree on Nolte. Not worth the nomination. And the Melville references? Way contrived.

    1. If Nolte didn’t have his hotel room cliche scene, I could see the case for his Oscar nomination. But with that scene as part of his performance…yikes. I get what you guys are saying about the short scenes…but c’mon, not that short. These fighters are supposed to be top contenders.

      Sure Mike Tyson got known for pummelling opponents in seconds, but he’s an exception – not a rule.

  4. I ended up liking this film a lot. Yes, it has a lot of predictable elements, but I think the characters are strong and I like how it doesn’t always take the obvious ways out, The fighting, while essential to the film’s story and ideas, never becomes a spectacle and I actually like that Hardy is more restrained than he was in a film like Bronson.

    This ended up being one of my favorites the year and I didn’t even plan on seeing it for the longest time.

    1. Not to be presumptuous, but this one never struck me as being up your alley.

      I didn’t need Hardy to go full BRONSON in this movie, but I wanted slightly better things from him. It felt like anytime he got into a confrontation with his brother or father that he turned slightly cartoonish. His restraint the rest of the time was intriguing, but those hammy arguments kicked my concentration.

      As for the fights – I’d actually like it better if they were spectacle. I’m no MMA fan, but thesubject matter certainly seems to lend itself to good moviemaking…which i don’t feel this is.

  5. Yes, but Ryan, what about the editing? Can’t you go into detail about the editing of the film? I mean, wasn’t the editing so terrible! We should watch it together and I’ll point out all the really bad editing for you. I’m sure you haven’t had that experience yet.

  6. Ouch, although I agree that this movie was very cliched I thought it was an excellent and very enjoyable movie. The fights were exciting to watch and I’m not a big sports movie fan. The fact that I had to refrain from jumping out of my seat suprised me. Can’t agree on everything though 🙂

    1. The fights had an exciting moment or two (Brendan’s more so than Tommy’s), but it felt like every fight was far more interested in cutting out to the crowd and giving us their reaction…and that took me out.

      There’s a subtle science to cutting fight sequences like this, and for me WARRIOR had the wrong formula.

  7. Yeah, I cannot agree at all really, it’s definitely cliched, but in my opinion the acting more than covers that flaw up. I loved it. I also had to refrain from jumping out of my seat haha.

    Good review though, Ryan.

    1. I liked what Edgerton brought and a bit of what Hardy was trying to do, but Morrison and Nolte kept bringing me back down to earth.

      That said, it’s beginning to look like I was in the minority on this one.

  8. I actually really enjoyed Warrior. I would definitely agree that there is quite a bit of predictability, but I felt that the performances were compelling. I was actually very happy for Nick Nolte getting an Oscar nod. After watching the scene in the casino, and then the one in the hotel following, I was like NOMINATE HIM!!! Haha.

    I also thought the idea of Tommy destroying someone in a matter of seconds to fit well with the character. He was a monster. The part that didn’t seem to work so well for me was XXXXXXXXX winning – it seemed almost too far-fetched.

    I’m not a huge wrestling fan, but I really did enjoy this film. In fact, it was one of my favorites of 2011. Nice to read another perspective on it. Nice post, Ryan.

    1. Geez, give the woman a day off from writing and she comments up a storm!

      FYI – I went in and edited your comment. Not that I think anyone reading this far would jump up and down about spoilers, but better safe than sorry.

      Part of me thinks that if the story had actually kept the fact that Tommy and Brendan were brothers a secret longer, that it would have been a bit more rousing. But that’s me comparing the movie we watched to the movie in my head.

      As for the outcome of the final fight, you gotta believe that the two men would likely know how to match up against one another, and besides, a lot of what makes a fighter successful is skill, but a bit of it also comes down to luck.

      1. This is true. I try to keep up, because it seems like if I’m not doing one or the other or BOTH, then I fall too far behind the next day!

        No prob – sorry about that! Thanks for doing that.

        As much as they’d know how to match up against one another, I could see them fighting differently just because the stakes are higher and the pressure is more grueling when those two particular men had to face off. Just my thoughts, but I can see where you’re coming from.

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