The sports/fractured family drama enjoyed a renaissance last year with David O Russell’s The Fighter, which went on to win Oscar awards for its supporting actors and critical plaudits galore . Following in its training booted footsteps comes Warrior directed by Gavin O’Connor, a film set around the arena of mixed martial arts where two estranged brother’s pasts in the sport, and with each other, collide to become their destiny within the fighting ring.
The story sees ex marine Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy) return to his hometown of Pittsburgh where he goes back to the family home but does not reconcile with his father Paddy (Nick Nolte) a former alcoholic, whom he blames for driving him and his mother (who succumbed to illness) away. He instead enlists his father as his coach, as he was when Tommy was a child, to train him for MMA tournament Sparta which has a big cash prize, the biggest in the sport’s history, for the final victorious fighter. Meanwhile Tommy’s disconnected brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former UFC Fighter, is working as a physics teacher and trying to makes ends meet. Fearing financial ruin, he reprises his fighting skills and returns to the ring as an amateur. But circumstances conspire and he finds himself the unlikely underdog competing in Sparta and the course is set for a physical and emotional confrontation between the two feuding brothers.
Warrior is a film that wears its heart on its battered sleeve, it puts the viewer through the ringer emotionally yet it is also unrelenting in its depiction of the brutality and violence that the sport commands. Both brothers have a driving motive to win the competition and this brings a human element to an otherwise seemingly barbaric sport. Tom Hardy, bulked up by 28 pounds of muscle for the role (and his forthcoming outing as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) is inspired casting as Tommy, he is a man literally carrying the weight of the word on his shoulders, haunted by the past, he is a firecracker of pent aggression ready to ignite and explode in the fighting arena. And explode he does, his physicality and presence electrify the screen whenever he is competing. Joel Edgerton is a surprise revelation as Brendan, much like his character, he comes in as the mild mannered nice guy but can transform into steely intensity when pushed into the flight or fight situation. Nick Nolte brings a weary scruffy hound-dog pathos to his portrayal of the remorseful father, as only Nick Nolte can.
The narrative structure of the film follows a well worn path of sporting drama clichés and contrived outcomes yet you forgive Warrior for this. In fact a strange feeling takes over, even in the most discerning cinema viewer, you begin to wish for the inevitable, you hope the narrative takes you where you want to go, you want to fist pump the air getting carried away in all the excitement, you want the nail biting tension from the battles, you want and hope for the redemptive climatic showdown. Warrior appeals to the most primal instincts of cinema, it excites the mind and stirs the heart and who wouldn't get a kick out of that?
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