Warrior

"Break out the yellow tape, Sam. Tommy's walking away from the cage like he's leaving a crime scene."

Warrior was, for me, the most pleasant surprise of the year. I started doing MMA (mixed martial arts) as a sport earlier this year and enjoy it much more than I expected to. I never watch UFC and have no interest in beating people up, but I was looking for an alternative to running as a form of cardio and needed to add some variety to my exercise. It’s a great sport and there is much more strategy to it than the casual observer understands.

With MMA increasing in popularity exponentially over the past decade, it seems it was only a matter of time before they made a movie with the sport at the centre in the vein of Rocky or other boxing classics. I don’t think anyone ever expected that the end result would be such an emotional, well-written and well-directed film that uses MMA only as one of several tools to tell a great story.

Warrior centres on two brothers, Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan (Joel Edgerton) who both enter the same MMA tournament to compete for the grand prize of a whopping five million dollars. Each brother has their own motivations for entering the tournament that are drip-fed to the audience through the course of the story. Tommy and Brendan share a dark past with their alcoholic-turned-Christian father, Paddy (Nick Nolte) that you are able to piece together slowly through the character’s conversations. The brothers have not seen each other in many years and have gone down very different paths and this tournament has brought them together again. The movie swaps back and forth between each brother’s story giving each roughly the same amount of screen time.

For those who do not follow MMA, the two primary fighting styles (among several others) that are utilized by fighters are Muay Thai (punching and kicking to try and knock out your opponent) and Jiu-Jitsu (grappling on the ground and trying to inflict enough pain on your opponent to cause them to tap out). These two fighting styles are extremely different and it requires years of training to excel at both and learn to utilize them together.

Each of the brothers represents a separate fighting style that is a reflection of their character. Tommy is an ex-marine; brooding and full of hatred, he bottles up his anger and looks ready to explode in every scene. During his fights, he taps into that bottle and is fierce and unstoppable. Tommy fights primarily using Muay Thai and does not bother to slow down and worry about jiu-jitsu; his aggression and speed more than compensate for his weakness on the ground. Brendan is a physics teacher; he is married with two daughters and wants nothing more to provide for his family and give them a better life than the one he had as a child. Cool and collected, Brendan is smaller and slower than most other fighters, but his patience through Jiu Jitsu allows him to succeed and submit more aggressive opponents.

While Warrior reuses many of the clichés that are used to death in sports movies and rags-to-riches stories (the abusive father, the unsupportive wife, the training montage), they are handled so well that it doesn’t really matter. The movie is, for the most part, fairly predictable, and just by watching the trailer or reading this writeup I am sure you can figure out who the final fight of the tournament is between. However, something that the dual story dynamic introduces is that you end up rooting for both brothers equally, and the story introduces enough reasons for you to root for both of them. This buildup of events, combined with the strong feelings the brothers have towards for one another due to their past, make for one of the most emotional bouts ever put on film. Both brothers desperately need to win to find stability in their lives and they put years of past feelings into every punch. I sat on the edge of my seat during the entire finale and was immensely satisfied with the result.

The movie is well-paced and moves smoothly back and forth between stories without jarring transitions. The fights are brilliantly choreographed and if you aren’t interested in MMA at the beginning of the film you likely will be by the end. The performances are powerful, with Tom Hardy putting in one of his best turns to date. Hardy has certainly become someone to watch as of late, finally coming into the spotlight with his show-stealing role in Inception as Eames. His true breakout role was in Bronson a few years back, but I don’t know anyone who has seen that movie (I highly recommend it). We will get to see him beat the crap out of Batman as Bane in the Dark Knight Rises this summer and I look forward to seeing what he can bring to the character. Watching Joel Edgerton is watching the making of a movie star and I look forward to seeing how he springboards from this film.

Warrior joins the small handful of movies that I have watched twice in one day. Something in this film resonated with me and I love watching it over and over. Maybe it’s that I started MMA this year and it’s well timed and I appreciate the fight scenes. Maybe it’s that they used one of my favourite songs by The National during the final scene. Whatever it is, I enjoyed Warrior immensely and recommend it to anyone whether you appreciate MMA or not.