There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch at work with Warrior.
To judge the film by its trailers and promotional material, you’d be well with the bounds of reason to assume you’d been promised a rousing, inspirational film by the director of Miracle. At the screening I attended about a month ago, it was introduced as following in the tradition of Rocky.
That’s not altogether wrong, but it’s also misleading enough to make a correction necessary. While Warrior has the same blue-collar trappings (taking place primarily in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) and builds toward a tense, climactic championship fight, it’s not about an underdog making the most of a once-in-a-lifetime shot or the glory of self-actualization.
At the core of the film are the damaged relationships among a father and his two sons. To rely on cliché and call them “strained” would be an understatement. The tension between each — particularly where prodigal son Tommy (Tom Hardy) is involved — is uncomfortable to watch. For the same reason, it makes for fascinating drama.
As the film opens, Tommy, a veteran of the Iraq War, has just returned to Pittsburgh after a 14-year absence. Nick Nolte’s Paddy Conlon, nearly 1,000 days off the sauce, sees Tommy’s return as a chance to atone for past sins. But it’s quickly established in their dialogue that he was a cruel, alcoholic father. To escape the abuse, Tommy ran away with his mother, while his brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton) stayed close to home, fell in love and started a family of his own. Now a high school teacher working in Philadelphia, Brendan is a loving husband and dad, one who dotes on his children.
Tommy is openly hostile toward Paddy during their conversations, and makes it clear that there is no chance for reconciliation. Two emotional late-night encounters, one between Paddy and Brendan, the other between Tommy and Brendan, powerfully dramatize the clash between obstinance and desperate pleading. Together, these three men share bonds of bitterness, sorrow and regret.
The brothers are simultaneously struggling with overwhelming obligations when they learn of a mixed martial arts competition that promises a multimillion dollar payday to the winner. (Both have MMA experience.) For the proud Brendan, winning the tournament means being able to keep the bank from foreclosing on his family’s home. For Tommy, a victory means being able to keep a promise.
En route to the inevitable fraternal showdown, all three Conlons earn our strong sympathies: Brendan for his pride and determination, Paddy for his efforts at mending fences, and Tommy for his bravery and honor. Complicating matters is that Tommy is also a pressure cooker of righteous anger and resentment, threatening to boil over even as he maintains his control. At times, he’s a frightening, seemingly unstoppable force of will, often pacing with an animal’s simmering rage. Hardy’s performance is so controlled and authentic, that when a particular burst of anger erupts, though we’ve been anticipating it — even dreading it — throughout the film, it nevertheless delivers a jolt.
As a plot contrivance, the MMA ring is a brutal, unsubtle but potent outlet for settling old scores and grasping at last chances, a violent arena for the cathartic release of years of pent-up rage. However, many of the elements that we’d find in a formulaic film are here incongruous to the underlying emotions, which are much more complicated than we would expect from a movie like this. Warrior subverts our expectations by forcing us into the role of uncomfortable, conflicted witnesses.
Unlike those in the fictional audience, we understand the context of the battle. During the climactic showdown between the brothers, director Gavin O’Connor deftly keeps us off balance by contrasting shots of the cheering crowd with our own swirling emotions and what we know about the characters.
By the end of this film about damaged people and damaged relationships, we’ve come to care deeply for those characters. A significant amount of credit for that accomplishment must go to the movie’s three lead actors. In the wrong hands, Warrior would have wallowed in sentimentality. Hardy, Edgerton and Nolte are true to the pain.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2011.