By Erin Free
“I was very grateful when Mark Wahlberg brought The Fighter to me, because I feel humbled and grateful just to be part of it,” director, David O. Russell, told FilmInk in 2010. “It’s a beautiful story, and that’s what made me want to do it.”
The Fighter is based on the true story of “Irish” Micky Ward, a boxer from the mean streets of Lowell, Massachusetts living in the shadow of his half-brother, Dickie Eklund aka “The Pride Of Lowell”, a fighter with great potential who once famously put the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard on his back during a torturous ten-round bout. Emotionally, however, Dickie Eklund was a large-splatter mess: he fell into crack addiction, was imprisoned (copping a ten-year sentence for breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, kidnapping, masked armed robbery, and several other crimes), and then fought to retain a role in his younger brother’s career as Micky’s trainer, while butting heads with their tough-as-nails mother, and equally hard-scrabble seven sisters.
Micky and Dickie’s relationship – both as brothers, and professionals in the cut-throat world of mid-level boxing – was a highly complex one, and was effectively traced in Bob Halloran’s book, Irish Thunder: The Hard Life And Times of Micky Ward. A broken down Dickie Eklund, meanwhile, was featured in all his jittery, desperate, motor-mouthed, far-from-glory in the television documentary, High On Crack Street: Lost Lives In Lowell, where the champion boxer’s tragic fall from grace was just one story among several detailing the horrors of crack addiction.
Over the years, The Fighter attracted the likes of director, Darren Aronofsky, and actors, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, amongst others. It was Mark Wahlberg, however, who really kick-started the project. He brought the story to his friend, David O. Russell, with whom he’d worked on Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, and the unlikely directing candidate took on the film that would see him receive a Best Director Oscar nomination.
Despite its grim echoes of such gutter-poetry seventies classics as Rocky and Fat City, it was the unusual tics and beats of The Fighter that drew Russell in, and the director’s idiosyncrasies are all over the film. With Mark Wahlberg strong and affecting as Micky; an Oscar winning Christian Bale brilliant as the voluble, unpredictable Dickie Eklund; Amy Adams perfect as Micky’s headstrong love interest, barmaid Charlene; and Oscar winning Melissa Leo tragic and hilarious as Micky and Dickie’s over-the-top mother, Russell assembled nothing short of a dream cast.
Not surprisingly, for such a street-smart film, Russell checked any visual flourishes at the door to the cinematic gym. You can practically smell the sweat and liniment, and feel the fury emanating from the ring, as the director gives his film a deliriously right-here, right-now quality. The Fighter is an urgent, immediate, and utterly unforgettable masterpiece. “Authenticity is what made me want to do it and shoot it in a raw way, using handheld and Steadicam,” Russell told FilmInk. “I wanted to feel the sweat of the people, and to feel their red faces and how real they are. It’s easy, as George Lucas said, to make someone feel pain or suffering. That never impresses me. As George says, ‘I’ll just wring a kitten’s neck and you’ll feel something.’ It’s much harder to take someone who has done a lot of bad things, and make them charming. Dickie is beloved in that town, and Micky loves him. I didn’t want the audience to feel halfway through the movie, ‘What is this knucklehead brother bringing the idiot back in for? I don’t care about either one of them.’ These brothers love each other, and they help each other, and that’s why we care for them.”
