The Fighter

Always a Puncher's Chance
By Jeff Webb

A lot of talk has gone on lately about how Christian Bale will surely win a supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of a cracked-out boxer in _The Fighter_. Indeed, Bale is at the top of his game, delivering his best performance yet in a career full of good performances. But the truth is that Bale shouldn’t be getting a supporting actor Oscar. Not to say he wasn’t good. Quite the opposite. If and when Bale gets the Academy Award, it should be for lead, not supporting, because, rest assured, the fighter the title refers to is not boxing champ Micky Ward. _The Fighter_ is Ward’s resilient brother, Dicky Eklund.

Bale is Eklund, in so much as an actor can become the part he plays. Coming from a Boston suburb’s large, working-class family, Eklund’s greatest claim to fame is that he once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. Though, whatever promise his boxing career might have had is derailed by recklessness and drug addiction. As he says in the film, he had his chance and he blew it.

But if _The Fighter_ is about anything, it is about this: that a man can fuck-up many times in life and somehow, someway, come out on top so long as he never gives up. This fighting spirit describes Eklund’s brother and protégé, his half-brother Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg. Ward begins the movie with a streak of three boxing losses, leading him to consider walking away from the sport altogether, but ultimately his pride and his family will not let him walk away.

The film’s main problem is that it fails to make Ward a truly compelling character, though. This is through no fault of Wahlberg’s, who is a gifted actor and makes the best of what he can, but, for the most part, Ward is written as a static character. His emotions and world outlook remain pretty much the same for the film’s duration. It is Eklund who undergoes a transformation, the catalyst for the film’s emotional climax.

There’s a frenetic quality to _The Fighter_. The camera is always moving, swelling orchestra scores are replaced with rock music, and the characters talk fast, often changing moods from jovial to angry in a matter of seconds, leaving little room for introspection. It can all feel very frenzied and, at times, confusing for audience members as characters step on other characters’ lines of dialogue, but, in truth, this frenzied atmosphere matches the film’s subject. In both the ring and life, knock-outs come fast, and so, too, can victories. No matter how deep in shit a person’s life may be, there is always a puncher’s chance.