David O. Russell is trying mighty hard to distance himself from the screaming, over-the-top director that recently lost all funding for his film Nailed. In years past we’ve seen Russell as a quirky director aiming at subverting the more typical ideas of romantic and family comedies. His oeuvre prior to The Fighter has been one contained to a more arthouse audience, a series of films that drew high quality actors but were seen by critics and their brainer ilk. With The Fighter, Russell steps away from the quirkier side of his filmography, investing in a film that follows a more mainstream formula but doesn’t drown out his more auteur tendencies.
The Fighter,
on the surface, is the story of boxer Mickey Ward (Mark
Wahlberg), a welterweight who rose up from humble beginnings
to surprisingly snatch the championship. The bigger, more
interesting story, is Ward’s relationship with his brother
Dicky Ecklund, (Christian Bale) a one time boxing superstar,
who’s succumbed to a debilitating crack addiction. Dicky and
his mother, Alice, trainer and manager respectively to
Mickey, continue to hold Mickey back, and the most
interesting aspects of the film rotate around his attempt to
distance himself from these toxic ties. David O. Russell is
at his best in every film when he humorously and savagely
dissects the connections we make between family, friends and
duty, and there’s no difference here. The first
three-fourths of the film find Russell at his finest,
bouncing Mickey off his family’s sheer craziness while he
attempts to build a career for himself as a boxer. Melissa
Leo’s Alice and her entire snaggle-toothed posse of
daughters are so hugely writ, at times they seem cartoons,
but the direction by Russell makes them believable, foils to
Wahlberg’s simple character.
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