Although this tale of two brothers that both fight in the same Mixed Martial Arts tournament contains many familiar moments and emotions featured in other sports films (including MIRACLE, which director Gavin O'Connor also helmed), I think I'm safe in saying that you have never seen a film quite like WARRIOR, a work that represents powerful, brutal, thunderous, intimate filmmaking at its very best. This is due to two of the most sweat-and-blood masculine performances I've seen since Stallone first entered the ring as Rocky and changed the world.
Some of you might know Joel Edgerton from his recent roles in the Australian crime dramas THE SQUARE and ANIMAL KINGDOM, but he's probably best know (for better or worse) for playing the young Uncle Owen in the second STAR WARS trilogy. He's going to be hugely famous very soon (he has the lead role in THE THING prequel and about 20 other things lined up after that), but WARRIOR is something entirely different for him. It's a chance for him to use his full physical being playing Brendan Conlon, a Philadelphia-area high school teacher, husband to Tess (Jennifer Morrison), and father to two young girls. He's strapped for cash and decides to drive to a local strip club to take part in an amateur MMA competition in the club's parking lot. He absolutely decimates the reigning champion, takes home his money, and is promptly suspended without pay when the fight hits YouTube. His only course of action is to throw himself back into MMA fighting and training full time and get good enough to enter a big competition in Atlantic City. Without that money, he loses his house, so his motivation is clear.
But the film also tells us the story of Tommy Riordan (using his mother's maiden name and played by BRONSON and INCEPTION star Tom Hardy), who seems to emerge from the thin Pittsburgh air at the front door of his father Paddy (Nick Nolte), a three-year-sober old man, who has spent much of his sobriety trying to win back the love and forgiveness of his two sons. Tommy has clearly suffered a lifetime of neglect and anguish because of this man, but he needs something from his father--a trainer to help him get ready for the same contest. He has no interest in letting this or any person get under his skin emotionally, and when you experience Hardy's raw, naturalistic performance, you will immediately begin to fear him.
If any or all of this sounds formulaic, trust me when I saw it doesn't come across that way. Director O'Connor (who also made 1999's splendid TUMBLEWEEDS and the more recent PRIDE AND GLORY) has this unyielding passion to keep this movie as much about the characters and the deep-seated pain Tommy and Brendan feel that has led them to this fight and this place in their respective lives. WARRIOR is a film that is designed to drain you emotionally as well as physically. In all the best ways, it will leave you a crumbling husk of a human being when its done with you. And the details about their history and animosity toward each other are revealed slowly, like an agonizing breached birth. There's something about taking sides when their parents split up, a mother with cancer, and Tommy's going to war in the Middle East.
Both men have very real reasons for wanting that prize money, to the point where we're not exactly sure who to root for when their inevitable in-the-ring clash happens. There are so many layers and intricacies and psychological depths to plumb with WARRIOR that the temptation is to talk to much about it here. I'll try to avoid doing that, but I will say that perhaps the biggest shock about the film is how a full half of it is devoted strictly to full-length MMA battles. I was genuinely impressed with how O'Connor and his actors school us on the strategies of preparing and fighting. I've never seen competitive MMA before, but watching all of the competitors in this contest go against each other, I have a new-found respect for the sport.
And the way the brothers fight could not be more different. Brendan is more thoughtful, he paces himself, he allows his enemy to almost beat himself before going in for the win. Tommy is a wrecking ball; he enters the ring no music or hoopla; commits unspeakable acts of violence; and then leaves the ring before the ref even officially declares him the winner. He's a force of nature meshed with an rabid animal that only cares about tearing your face off. He's not evil, but if he were, you'd never leave the house without wearing a suit of armor. I'm so glad between the both of them, these great actors have about a billion movies coming out in the next year or so.
And I don't mean to leave out poor Nick Nolte, who is absolutely fantastic in this return-to-form role as a pathetic old man just trying to salvage what he can of his family. He shows up on Brendan's doorstep desperate to see his granddaughters and has the door slammed in his face. There is exactly zero percent sentimentality in WARRIOR, and I should have said that in the first sentence O'Connor and his team are not interested in wrapping things up neatly with everyone friends again. Don't expect that, but also don't assume you won't cry just because the film refuses to play the role of tearjerker. And the first person to say this movie sounds like THE FIGHTER gets a knee to the gut. The two films could not be more different; this one is actually better.
In the end, this is a film about family and fighting, and it succeeds on both levels to absolute pull us in and not let go until we're left bruised and bloody. The fight scenes are truly epic (as is the running time at about two hours, 20 minutes), and they are shot and executed so convincingly, you can smell the sweat, feel the heat of each punch, and start to choke out when one fighter puts a death grip on another. I think I saw stars more than once. What I've told you about WARRIOR has only scratched the surface of why its so thoroughly soul-enriching in its worthiness and impressiveness. This is truly one of the best films I've seen all year, and to think otherwise means you deserve as ass whopping of apocalyptic proportions, and I know just the guys to give it to you.
