Review: "Warrior" Packs a Wallop

Tom Hardy

If you’ve seen the trailer for Warrior, you’d be right to go in expecting a blatantly sentimental, feel-good sports movie with lots of swelling, triumphant music and a tidy tear-jerker ending. “From the Director of Miracle!” blare the ads. “Prepare To Be Emotionally Manipulated!” Okay, so I made that last part up.

Obviously, for gay audiences there’s an extra layer of attraction: the promise of Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, shirtless. Together. Wrestling. In a cage. So what if they’re playing brothers? It’s not like they’re actually related.

Personally, I’m turned off by the advertising campaign employed by Lionsgate to sell the movie. It’s undeniably a smart move on their part – if they’d attempted to market it as an arthouse film it would’ve a) been dishonest and b) resulted in lower box-office grosses – but as is the ads feel cloying.

Ultimately though, Warrior is a film well-worth seeing; in other words, however they can get butts in seats is alright by me. Draw in the crowds with empty calories; leave them with something nutritious that they weren’t quite expecting. In spite of myself, I have to admit it's a win-win scenario.

The film stars Edgerton (last year’s Animal Kingdom) as Brendan Conlon, a high school physics teacher and former MMA fighter with a wife (Jennifer Morrison) and two children, one of them afflicted with a serious heart condition. Thanks to rising medical bills the family is now faced with foreclosure, unless Brendan can quickly find a way to pay off the bank. So what’s a former bruiser to do but get back in the ring?

Right around this time Brendan’s estranged younger brother Tommy (Tom Hardy) shows up at the Pittsburgh home of their father Paddy (Nick Nolte), a former alcoholic whose abusive ways forced the boys’ mother to flee to the West Coast over a decade previously. She took Tommy with her, but Brendan chose to stay behind with his high-school girlfriend Tess, the woman he’s since married.

After they moved away, Tommy and Brendan's mother suffered from a bout of cancer that eventually killed her, causing the former son to become more and more resentful of his brother's absence. The result was his transformation into a haunted, hulking malcontent with a major chip on his shoulder and a stint in the Iraq war under his belt. Now he’s looking to win the $5 million prize offered by the Sparta mixed-martial arts competition in Atlantic City, and he wants his father – who once trained him in wrestling as a teenager – to prepare him for the big-money event.

This is all a setup for the movie’s big hook – brother vs. brother! – in a development that inarguably requires a major suspension of disbelief. Thankfully that’s not hard to do given the meaty performances offered up by Edgerton and especially Hardy, not to mention the extremely well-shot, performed, and choreographed fight scenes - bone-crunching, highly realistic affairs that are often punishingly visceral.

Hardy and Joel Edgerton

Hardy undoubtedly steals the show here, in a brooding, complex performance that instantly calls to mind the ghost of legendary Method-man Marlon Brando. The actor not only ended up gaining 28 pounds of muscle for the role (his hulking, tattooed build is almost intimidating to look at), but more importantly a deep understanding of his wounded character’s severe inner conflict. This conflict is manifested in his bulked-up build and seemingly permanent scowl; to be sure, there is an undeniable connection between Tommy's extreme physical appearance and his perhaps irrevocably-damaged soul.

Edgerton is good too, though he’s been saddled, if you can call it that, with a less attention-getting role. Of the two brothers, he’s the one to have come out on the other side of a troubled childhood with his head on straight, a state of mind no doubt engendered by the love of his wife.

Nevertheless, the brothers’ relationship was ultimately severely strained by Brendan’s decision to stay behind with his girlfriend, leaving Tommy to handle their mothers’ illness (unknown to both Brendan and Paddy) on his own.

Indeed, this is a film about family ties stretched to the limit, and writer/director Gavin O’Connor admirably treats those relationships with all the complexity they deserve – right up to the final moments of the climactic fight.

Arguably the only character who gets short shrift here is Brendan’s beautiful wife Tess, played by Morrison in a completely thankless role. While O’Connor is clearly catering to the male audience here, it’s unfortunate he couldn’t have given her more to do but stand around and look worried (and, later, act as Brendan’s “Adrienne” during the final match).

In a performance that matches Hardy’s in emotional power, Nolte is heartbreaking in the role of the aging alcoholic trying to make up for a past spent being abusive and neglectful toward his family. There is a poignant bit in a hotel room between Paddy and Tommy close to the end of the film that is almost painful to witness, as the distraught father falls off the wagon and his son is confronted with the monster he once knew.

The scene, even more than the final charged confrontation between brothers, is a genuine tear-jerker – no swelling strings here – thanks to both two amazing performers and O’Connor’s understanding that sometimes, the most fraught of family confrontations end not with a bang but a whimper.

Warrior hits theater this Friday, September 9th