I’m guilty-as-charged when my mate Liz calls me “so white bread”. I hate violence. I hate violent films. It makes me nauseous and distracts me from the bigger picture, if you’ll pardon the pun.
But in spite of that, I enjoyed the film ‘Warrior’, which centres around the unbelievably violent ‘sport’ Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).
Starring Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte & Tom Hardy (who played Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights!), the film has a strong enough story about family, redemption and forgiveness that the MMA can just be a vehicle that allows that to unfold if, like me, that’s all you want it to be. That said, the physicality of Edgerton and Hardy’s performances is admirable to say the least. Hardy especially has those chiselled muscles that can only be achieved with hours and hours at the gym. Hours and hours and hours.
I’ve heard a bit of buzz about Nolte in this film. He plays the raw and broken father of Edgerton & Hardy precisely as a seasoned, brilliant actor would, but I think the role was too small to really be anything buzz-worthy.
Edgerton’s Aussie accent crept in a few times but that only made him more endearing for me. It’s that ‘awww, local guy made good’ factor I guess. His performance was excellent and hopefully the start of more Hollywood fame & fortune coming his way.
I reckon a good test of how engrossed you are in a film is how many times you’re inclined to look at your watch. In this case it was just once, when at the two hour mark we still seemed a way off an ending. It went for another 20 minutes after that, so I’d advise against guzzling a giant frozen Coke in the opening minutes.
The story is predictable and heads to a fairytale ending but I was still engrossed enough to want to know which of the brothers was going to win the fight of their lives; a fight that was of course about much more than MMA.
‘Warrior’ opens in cinemas this Thursday, 27 October.
(You can see a non-fiction sample of MMA here)