The Fighter vs Georgia

They probably should have called it The Fighters, plural. The characters in The Fighter do little besides fight, in the ring or otherwise. Women, men, cops, indoors, outdoors, you name it. You like a good scuffle? A nice shouting match? A melee? A rabblerousing? The Fighter is the movie for you. The thing they fight about most? Duh, fighting.

The Fighter is the third movie pairing Mark Wahlberg with director David O. Russell; besides The Departed and Boogie Nights, I’d say they represent his best performances. It’s clear at this point Russell is the Wahlberg Whisperer. It’s a shame he couldn’t have directed The Happening.

This time, Wahlberg stars as Mickey Ward, a boxer in Lowell, Massachusetts in the early 1990s. Mickey hasn’t had a lot of success, but he’s dedicated and tough, and willing to keep trying. He’s managed by his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo). He calls her Alice, which is probably all we need to know about their relationship. In the past, Mickey’s been trained by his half-brother, Dickie (Christian Bale), who was once also a boxer, known as the Pride of Lowell, for that one time he might have knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard (there’s much debate throughout the movie about whether or not it actually happened.) Dickie’s worth as a coach is dwindling, unfortunately, as his addiction to crack escalates. Dickie is a wreck, skin and bones, jittery, late for everything. He’s being followed by a documentary crew from HBO; he thinks they’re filming his boxing comeback, and that he’s bringing positive attention to his brother’s rise in the sport as well. I’ll leave it to you to find out if he’s right. Christian Bale is basically always good, so it’s hard not to exaggerate when he’s seriously good. He’s unrecognizable in The Fighter—too skinny, balding, crazy-eyed—but retains enough charisma and warmth that you believe people still want to high-five him in the street, and enough control that he might still have the goods to train a championship boxer. What he doesn’t have the goods for, sadly, is becoming a champ again himself. Dickie’s delusions about his life, skill and future are heartbreaking, and are surprisingly central to The Fighter. Bale makes Dickie so real he becomes an object of concern. I began to worry someone might ask me to drive him home.

As Dickie’s life spirals more tragically, Mickey is faced with new prospects. He’s been offered a year of training in Las Vegas. Getting paid to be a better boxer will certainly bring better fights than he gets at home, and it’s bound to be better training than he’s gotten lately from Dickie, who sometimes doesn’t even show up.  This doesn’t sit well with Alice, who sees Dickie as part of the family brand, and Mickey as the future. Alice is maybe the saddest character in The Fighter, and I wish I liked her more. Melissa Leo is as good as Bale, in a way, at transforming into Alice and delivering a believable character. As hard as The Fighter tries to make a villain out of boxing and drugs, the brunt of the movie’s conflict comes from Alice’s bull-headed blurring of Mickey’s roles as son and employee. Leo is part of a dying breed, the female character actor, and sinks her teeth in. She makes Alice a greedy, tunnel-visioned mama lion, unapologetic about whether or not anyone likes her. Alice is mother to nine kids; Leo is too young to have given birth to any of them, but it won’t matter. Leo brings Alice to bristling, off-putting, intimidating life. This is kind of my way of saying that as great as Leo is, I never saw Alice as anything but the film’s villain. Every time she barked that she knew what was best for Mickey, I just shook my head that she was even being considered. Any logical person would latch onto that Vegas offer and never let go, rather than having to spend five minutes with Alice and her band of scary daughters (Alice has seven daughters, each rough-and-tumbler than the last, all smoking, yelling, stiff-haired bullies). Alice feels Mickey’s career slipping between her fingers, and places the blame on Charlene (Amy Adams), Mickey’s new girlfriend.

Of every chameleon, underdog and character actor in The Fighter, my favorite is Amy Adams. Charlene is as angry and defensive as many of the other characters, but she’s sensible too. She’s a bartender who partied too much to finish college, and was one of the pioneers of lower-back tattooing. She’s been knocked around enough by life that when Mickey first asks her out, she asks if he’s married. Adams is a gem, can throw and take a punch, and surprisingly knows her way around the f-word and its variants.

The Fighter is David O. Russell’s most grounded movie, which makes the stylistic liberties he takes all the more bracing. For example, audio from one of Dickie’s old fights played over a scene of him shadow-boxing in a crack house. The fight scenes are shot much as they would be for TV, although Mickey is so out-matched at times, they take on extra drama. One fight is so bloody, the girl holding the round card slips in the ring. The movie has a twist, involving that HBO documentary, and Russell handles it smoothly, without calling attention to it as a big, clanging surprise for the audience. It surprises Dickie and his family enough as it is.

Like The Fighter, the main character of Georgia has to contend with comparisons to a possibly more talented older sibling. Unlike The Fighter, the main character of Georgia is the movie’s strung-out, fuck-up black sheep. Georgia, the title character (note I didn’t say “main”), is played by Mare Winningham. She’s a stable family woman, clear-headed, who sings in a folk and bluegrass band. She’s a success, but not hungry for attention or fame. Like Mickey Ward, she has unconditional love and limited patience for her reckless sibling. Sadie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is only in a band because Georgia’s in one. If she ever had a voice, she drank and drugged it away. But Sadie is an interesting performer, much more in the punk vein than folk, and you might be able to imagine a world where she might succeed. Drugging, slacking, too much eye makeup, not talented enough to front a band, but doing it anyway. If Sadie were real, Courtney Love would have punched her lights out back stage. Sometimes you’ll want to as well.

Georgia has less at stake than The Fighter. Money, fame and pride aren’t as big an issue. Georgia would probably be happy for Sadie just finding sobriety and clean bedding. Sadie is near impossible to love, but Jennifer Jason Leigh is undeniable. What a gifted actor, as fearless and committed as Christian Bale, and utilized so much less. That’s a shame. As Sadie, Leigh is pretty, ugly, sad, funny, inspiring and infuriating. Georgia was written by Leigh’s mother, Barbara Turner, who knows a champ when she sees one.

The Fighter: A-

Georgia: B+