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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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The Fighter (Film)

by Mark Demetrius | January 17, 2011 17:14 | Edited January 17, 2011 17:16

Christian Bale steals the show with his unforgettable performance in this absorbing and bruising drama.

There is a long tradition of films about boxing, some trite and glossy, and others painfully realistic. The Fighter is at the better, grittier, Raging Bull end of that spectrum, although it's never in the same league.

 

Set in 1993, The Fighter tells the true story of "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a light welterweight boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts. Micky is part of a large, dirt-poor, working class family, presided over by his formidable but rather charmless mother, Alice (Melissa Leo). This bizarre melange, many of whom look as if they were transplanted from an early John Waters movie, includes seven rough-as-guts sisters. And then there is Micky's half-brother, Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale), a former boxer himself, who now trains Micky and basks in the remembered glory of once going ten rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard. The locals called him The Pride Of Lowell. 

 

While Wahlberg is perfectly credible and naturalistic, it is the wafer-thin Bale who steals the show. He puts in a quite unforgettable performance, and a manic one too, as Dickie has been addicted to crack for years. The scenes in a crackhouse, and of withdrawal, are particularly potent. There are those, Micky's new girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) included, who think that Micky's troubled family is holding him back. He feels like a failure, and wants a shot at a title fight. Tensions and problems abound as he tries to take charge of his career, and of his life. 

 

Something of a stylistic detour for director David O. Russell (Spanking The Monkey, I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings), The Fighter has a busy, nervy style, which oscillates between the comic and the potentially tragic. It's a curious and absorbing drama, often violent - and not only inside the ring - and well worth catching.