It seems that no sport is held to as high a standard in the realm of film as boxing.  In the last six years alone, Million Dollar Baby won the 2004 Oscar for Best Picture; Cinderella Man picked up three 2005 Oscar nominations of its own; 2006’s Rocky Balboa was a nostalgic trip that grossed upwards of $155 million (US) worldwide; Adam Carolla’s The Hammer was named Audience Favourite at the 2007 Victoria Film Festival and was also screened at Tribeca; and the 2008 documentary about Mike Tyson (aptly titled Tyson) received a ten-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.

On Friday, the Mark Wahlberg-starring Micky Ward biopic The Fighter gets its nationwide release, and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the buzz is once again surrounding a movie about the sweet science.  The film’s being lauded by a majority of the most-respected critics, and the awards voters have noticed as well, with Christian Bale, who plays Ward’s half-brother and sometimes-trainer, Dicky Eklund, already scoring Best Supporting Actor honours from the National Board of Review.  Tuesday’s Golden Globe nominations followed suit, with The Fighter being put up for six trophies, including Best Motion Picture in the Drama category, in addition to acting selections for Wahlberg, Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo, and a directorial nod for David O. Russell.

Does it live up to the hype?  It certainly does in some ways, but not necessarily as a whole.  To break it down, it’s time to bring back The Big Seven.  Here’s what resonated with me the most coming out of the theatre:

WARNING: If you’re extremely nit-picky about spoilers, and don’t want any part of Ward’s story, which is already quite well-documented, spoiled prior to seeing the film, feel free to come back and read this following your viewing of the film.  Otherwise, enjoy.

1. Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund
We knew Bale could act, and we knew that he was committed to the craft, but he still managed to steal the attention in this film with yet another big fluctuation in weight to properly fit a role.  This is the same guy that cut 63 pounds, all the way down to a sleep-deprived 121 to be in the relatively-unknown The Machinist in 2004, followed by gaining approximately 100 pounds to play the title character in Batman Begins.  To play Eklund, Bale “only” had to cut 30 pounds (sort of fitting for a boxing flick), but it was certainly a jarring transformation nonetheless.

Bale’s performance as the crack-addicted, faded fighter that was Eklund (who actually did go the distance with a young Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978) was so resonant that Wahlberg wasn’t truly given a chance to shine as Ward until a certain happening separated the two kin around the movie’s halfway point.  It was Eklund’s lesser-known story arc, not the more-notable career path of Ward, that became the captivating part of the film, and that’s nothing against Mark Wahlberg, who was great in his own right.

Of the many aforementioned categories that The Fighter can win awards in this year, consider Bale’s chances to rack up Supporting Actor honours to be the best bet.

2. The Boxing Scenes
I’ve got my qualms with The Fighter’s three main fight scenes, but, don’t get me wrong, the in-ring action was fantastically well-done.  HBO’s crews were brought in to film the major match-ups (Ward’s meetings with Mike Mungin, Alfonso Sanchez, and Shea Neary), and the effort certainly paid off.  There’s truly little to say on this front.  Alongside Bale’s performance, this is what the film will be remembered for, and that’s truly the most that you can ask out of a boxing movie.

I did, however, have some issues with how the boxing was handled overall.  First and foremost, I would’ve liked to have seen a little more of it.  I realize that these scenes were likely, by far, the most expensive to film in the picture, but they were also the most captivating, and provided the film’s emotional payoff, showing Ward in a state that he clearly wasn’t in around his large, mostly possessive family.  Seeing how selective the makers of the film were in picking which Ward fights to include in the movie (which we’ll get to later), couldn’t they have picked a fourth fight to treat as a focal point, as opposed to instead utilizing a montage to convey that Ward was winning after returning from a hand injury?

Additionally, though all three of the major fight scenes were truly captivating, they all reeked of similarity (the last two especially).  While Micky Ward, as a fighter, was known for his heart more than anything, he certainly brought some skill to the table as well, and the fight scenes may have sold the cult favourite a little short on that front.

3. The Long And Winding…Oh, Wait
If there is one qualm with this film that takes precedence over the others, it’s undoubtedly the fact that the arc that Micky Ward takes doesn’t exactly resemble that of his career.  I realize that if you’re treating The Fighter as a popcorn flick, which I absolutely recommend, this isn’t a problem whatsoever.  If you’re there, however, to learn the story of Micky Ward, this film isn’t necessarily the best aide for doing so.

Take into account that, in the film, following Ward’s beating at the hands of the much-larger Mike Mungin, extending his active losing streak to four fights, Micky takes an indeterminately long layoff, partially for reasons that I won’t mention here, prior to coming back for a few stay-busy fights (delivered in convenient montage form!) before fighting top prospect Alfonso Sanchez.  Immediately after the Sanchez fight, Ward receives a shot at Shea Neary’s “world title”.

In reality: The Mungin fight ended a run of four straight wins for Ward, who fought eight more times prior to his 32-month layoff from October 1991 to June 1994.  The layoff did indeed follow a four-fight losing streak, but the fourth defeat came at the hands of Ricky Meyers, not Mungin.  Following the aforementioned montage of fights, Ward gets set to step up and take on undefeated Alfonso Sanchez.  If you consider the Mungin fight in the film to take place at the point that Ward actually fought Meyers, the movie is correct in that Ward went undefeated (8-0 in reality, though not depicted to be in as many fights in The Fighter) between those two points.

Immediately after fighting Sanchez in real life, Ward did get a world title shot, but it wasn’t against Shea Neary.  He actually fought a much better fighter than Neary in “Cool” Vince Phillips, and it was for one of the recognized world titles (the IBF), as opposed to Neary’s WBU title, a belt primarily known for being held by Ricky Hatton for three-and-a-half years from 2001-2004 (Hatton vacated the strap prior to his breakout victory over newly-elected Hall-of-Famer Kostya Tszyu in June 2005), and has only been contested once since.  Ward quickly lost to Phillips, and lost again to Zab Judah (for a minor belt) two fights later.  Only after three more wins would Ward get his shot at Neary.

I understand why the filmmakers would choose to utilize the fights they used, as they were obviously aiming to tell a certain sort of story, and to showcase a certain part of Ward’s character as a fighter.  Unfortunately, due to the liberties they took, it felt like the film didn’t represent Ward’s career as a whole.  Maybe the bar was set too high in that regard by Cinderella Man, which took a string of fights in Jim Braddock’s career that actually occurred consecutively, and properly chronicled his ascent to the heavyweight championship.  Instead of doing that, The Fighter seemed to handpick a few of Ward’s fights and make a story out of them.  While it did make for some fun viewing, it failed to properly depict the full story of a fan favourite fighter.

I considered this to be a bigger problem than the fact that the movie didn’t feature Ward’s 2001 Fight of the Year with Emanuel Augustus and his legendary 2002-03 trilogy with Arturo Gatti (though Gatti was ever-present in the film due to a large amount of references to him), which itself earned a pair of Fight of the Year awards, as the story wrapped up prior to these match-ups.  While it would have been great to see a filmmaker take a shot at recreating these wars, I have no problem with the apparent reality that the filmmakers wanted a certain type of Ward fight, and that the four battles I just mentioned didn’t fit the bill.  Additionally, the Ward-Gatti trilogy could practically be a movie of its own considering the depth of the two characters and the three fights.  There really was no way that this film, a Ward biopic, could do those three classics justice.  In fact, the physical presence of Gatti in The Fighter likely would have taken too much attention away from Ward, which is certainly something that one wouldn’t want to do in a story about Micky.

4. Where’s The Bad Guy?
While I’ll grant that it’s certainly understandable due to the fact that film didn’t feature Ward’s one true rival, Gatti, I was a little disappointed by the fact that the movie lacked one thing that great boxing pictures tend to have: A true villain.  Shea Neary certainly wasn’t it, as we didn’t even hear a thing about Neary until after the Ward-Sanchez fight.  With the way he was referred to at times throughout the movie, it seems as if Gatti could be treated as the vaunted opponent who every fighter wants a shot at, which was something of the case in reality.  Unfortunately, the film ended before Ward met Gatti, and Neary wasn’t given the attention needed to really allow the viewer to despise him.

When judged against other boxing films, The Fighter certainly falls short in that regard, as there was no Apollo Creed or Max Baer, to name two fantastic boxing film villains, to contrast against Ward’s protagonist role.

5. Give Mark Wahlberg Some Credit
While he wasn’t quite the powerhouse that Christian Bale was, Mark Wahlberg was terrific as Micky Ward, albeit in a more subtle role.  The work required to get his body sculpted similarly to that of Ward’s appears to have been no small undertaking, and Wahlberg certainly came through on that front.  As for his actual boxing, there wasn’t too much for him to do, as, in the major fight scenes, he was the one taking most of the punches.  When he did have to throw, however, he certainly passed the test.

6. The Ward/Eklund Family & Lowell, Massachusetts
The blue collar nature of the Ward/Eklund family came off as terrificly authentic throughout the film, as the streets of Lowell, where the family is from, set a terrific backdrop and put across the type of community that would first throw itself behind Dicky Eklund, followed by them becoming rabid fans of his half-brother.  Kudos to those behind the film for not taking any chances on filming this type of story anywhere but where it actually occurred.

7. Here’s To You, Mickey O’Keefe!
The coolest piece of minutiae about the film?  Mickey O’Keefe, the Lowell cop who served as Ward’s co-trainer, alongside Eklund, played himself in the film in a charming touch.  I honestly couldn’t tell that the guy wasn’t an actor.

The Scorecard
All in all, I didn’t see exactly where all the awards hype came from, with the exception of Bale’s shot at a handful of Best Supporting Actor trophies, but don’t let that stop you from giving The Fighter a watch.  The fight scenes are wonderfully done, and there’s a good, resonant story in between.  As long as you don’t go in expecting a blow-by-blow re-telling of Ward’s career, it’s certainly a fun way to spend a pair of hours.

-Travis MacKenzie