Review: Warrior
Well, the Fall season has officially kicked off (we have Drive, Moneyball, 50/50, and Take Shelter all within the next few weeks), and where better to start than with a potentially crowd-pleasing, money-making product that has also garnered quite favorable reviews. I’m talking about Warrior, the MMA fighting/brotherly strife story directed by Gavin O’Connor (Miracle) and starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte. Whether due to its previously under-the-radar presence or the recent success of the similarly themed The Fighter, Warrior was initially met with fairly low expectations (which, I think, works to its advantage). Then, press members seemed to construct a bandwagon of praise–again, the reviews are pretty impressive–and now, audience members are likely to hop aboard. Going into the film, I didn’t know whether to feed on my early misgivings (the trailer didn’t exactly leave me turning cartwheels) or on the newly-minted “buzz.” I suppose the two canceled each other out, and I viewed the film with as much of a blank-slate as possible, even if I secretly really wanted to like it.
Perhaps predictably, my equivocating expectations were met generously on either side of the divide. Ultimately, I find that the film is undone by two things: its structure and its pacing (two aspects that obviously go hand-in-hand). I could point to other problems, which are in no short supply. “Conventionality” need not be a swear word, but here, the scales tip from it to downright cheesiness. Extraneous subplots weigh down the duration in all the wrong places, and their intended purpose emerges as unclearly as their execution. Emotional investment through cookie-cutter conflicts and one-dimensional characters inhabited by one-dimensional performances? Comic relief? Light diversion from the apparently heavy proceedings? It’s tough to say, but I admit that I was near laughter for inadvertent reasons. A fair helping of the tacky can be overlooked, but not when it comes at the expense of an underdeveloped thru-line at the film’s center.
In other words, thinly drawn, obviously acted peripheral characters and needless, tonally skewed subplots can be ignored if we get them as fatty additions to the lean meat of the central plot. In this case, the father-son(s) dynamic does not delve deeply enough to tap the emotional well. Nor does the brother-brother dynamic, which is strangely given only one scene as build-up (and even that scene is a bit anti-climactic). The major characters are as underwritten as the minor ones. I understand that a great deal can be transmitted through silences and facial expressions and subtle inferences. I just didn’t find such transmitted here. Paddy Conlon (Nolte) was clearly a terrible father; we know that he was an alcoholic, and an oblique comment suggests spousal abuse. When we meet him in the film’s first scene, he’s near 1,000 days sober and repentant. I don’t expect his sons to erase all done damages and welcome him with open arms. Initial resentment is warranted; 2 hours of repetitive, unrelenting expressions of it are not, at least with regard to what the director allows us to see. When the father is training his son and is met with nothing more than continual vitriol, I can’t help but feel sympathy for Paddy and irritation with his boys. If we were given some sort of specificity as to why Tommy (Hardy) and Brendan (Edgerton) view their father with such disdain, we would more willingly side with them–which would be important, because sympathizing with at least one of them is the only thing that can lead to cathartic payoff in the final showdown. Yet, perhaps fearful of explaining too much, O’Connor does not give us enough.
This is where pacing and structure come into play. Instead of–as opposed to in addition to–fleshing out the central conflict, Warrior throws out ludicrous, muddled, and ineffective strands of story like they’re candy. Its structure before the tournament is one of cross-cutting between the brothers’ narratives. As we’ve seen in a number of films that deal in parallel build-up or a mosaic of characters, this device only works if all the plots are equally compelling. In this film, Tommy’s is much more interesting than Brendan’s, and the cross-cutting requires that just as we become invested in Tommy, we switch to the more conventional brother (you know…the one with the threat of foreclosure and the wife that doesn’t want him to fight…never seen that before), all the while hoping that we can get him out of the way and move back to Tommy. Once the tournament begins, not enough has been established between Brendan, Tommy, and Paddy, even though I was just forced to watch clichéd, half-hearted domestic disputes about bills to pay. And in full tournament sway, there are so many fights one right after the other that a great deal of anticipation toward the climax, as well as any possibility of more character mining, is almost lost entirely.
You could say that the climactic showdown is thrilling because you want both brothers to win. Because of my aforementioned sympathy for their father, I’m not sure that I wanted either brother to win. I suppose the All-American, family-man Brendan will gain the audience’s heart, but the fact that he won’t let Paddy even meet his granddaughter is appalling to me (the good-hearted, reformed Paddy must have been Satan himself twenty years ago, for nothing less would explain such hostility). If I had to pick a corner, it would be that of the tight-lipped, recalcitrant Tommy. Hardy infuses the near cipher of a character with so much incendiary charisma that it’s impossible not to like him, even if Brendan exhibits more likeable qualities. Hardy has a mostly white canvas to paint on here, and he makes the most of it, balancing his trademark charm with his equally trademark boiling intensity and utilizing his physicality to the fullest. He summons a rage in the final fight that is a wonder to behold, scarily close to inhuman. Despite my reservations with the steps leading to it, the climax is nevertheless very well done, providing in the visceral what it lacks on the page.
I said at the top of my review that my expectations were met generously on either side of the divide. After offering so much negativity, I guess that “generous” remark was a little misleading. Yet, the actors completely sell it, and some of the physical sparring is thrilling. I suspect that many will find this an enjoyable popcorn flick, but I was hoping for more than that. While my problems finally outweigh my points of praise, one could do worse on a Friday night diversion.
-Rob
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