Warrior (2011) - Review

Warrior

I will admit, to my ever-lasting shame, that I had never seen Warrior until a few months ago. After experiencing almost every possible emotion you could want from a film, I am frustrated that I did not watch this movie when it was first released in 2011, so, as recompense almost, I will write a (probably incoherent) review.

The film is focused on two brothers who both enter the mixed martial arts competition, Sparta, to win the $5m prize (sound familiar?), whilst also dealing with their own strenuous lives and coping with their, honestly, quite crappy childhoods. Tommy, played by the ever-watchable Tom Hardy, is an emotionally damaged ex-marine gone AWOL who epitomises Andrew Spicer’s ‘Angry Young Man’ (and also sports a pack of six extremely defined abdominal muscles – I happened to notice). Meanwhile, Tommy’s brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), the lead character – and all round nice-guy – is immediately depicted as less-than-manly as the spectator’s introduction to him see him having his face painted becoming a princess. He is the family man with an average job who needs that prize money to pay the mortgage.
 

 

I love broken and damaged characters, and none in this film is more broken and more damaged than Strepsil-proof, razorblade gurgler, Paddy Conlon, wonderfully acted by Nick Nolte. As the spectator soon discovers, Paddy represents the warped side of patriarchal authority and subjected both his sons and wife to physical abuse, but is a thousand days sober when we are introduced.

 

There are a few tear-jerking moments in Warrior, all provided by Nick Nolte, including one particularly touching moment (a personal favourite!) when Paddy breaks his sobriety in the aftermath of an especially vicious argument with Tommy, and is cradled, childlike, in the arms of his youngest son as he realises the true extent of his failure as a father and as he mourns the lost opportunity to be loved by his children.
 

 

Despite the generic plot idea, Warrior is a film about hope and family and redemption, with fighting and not vice versa – as so many people who have not seen the film have complained. So between the moments when even guys will feel the man-tears flowing and those that make you jump off of your sofa, punching the air and shouting “Hell yeah!” you have an exquisitely acted movie that shows, once more, that Tom Hardy is a genius.