Head Kick Legend at the Movies: 'Warrior' Is Not Terrible

As much as I love MMA, I've never held my breath waiting for a good movie to be produced out of it. Part of this has to do with the sport itself: sure it's interesting from a cinematic perspective, but what exactly is the culture of MMA that would make for a compelling story? MMA doesn't really have that culture. It's not defined in the compelling social ways that boxing, or baseball is. This was evident with Never Back Down: imagine the UFC gladiator intro, but in the form of a feature length, starring whiny teenagers and a lame rock band of the week punctuating every change of mood in the characters, and that was your "movie". I can't hate on a film that never intended to be anything but a cash grab exploiting the novelty of MMA, but mediocrity is mediocrity.

And then there was David Mamet's RedBelt, a film I was actually looking forward to. It had good actors, and the writer of Glengarry Glen Ross. What could go wrong? Everything, apparently. A bizarre, pretentious, and hopelessly convoluted exercise in Mamet's unwillingness to not make every scene a Rubik's Cube of character deception. Then again Mamet has become increasingly unhinged ever since he's been "no longer a 'brain-dead liberal", but I digress. So what about Warrior?

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect with Warrior. I knew it looked hamfisted, and the plot points were predictable, but what interested me was the pedigree of the actors. Joel Edgerton has done fine work: though casual moviegoers may know him as the weird and awkward Hugo Croop in Smokin' Aces, it was his performance in the small Aussie crime film Animal Kingdom that won him critical acclaim (and he'll later be seen in the remake of John Carpenter's already absurdly perfect, The Thing). And then there is Tom Hardy, who himself got noticed in Nicolas Winding Refn's abstract, but brutal film Bronson. I knew the acting would be good. But what about the story?

You probably already know the details, but here they are: Edgerton plays school teacher and former UFC fighter, Brendan Conlon, looking to get back in the cage in order to fix his dire financial situation (which his wife natrually objects to) by entering a big tournament. Simultaneously, his estranged brother has just come back from a sort of exile, and meets up with his father Paddy (played by Nick Nolte in a surprisingly restrained performance). Neither brother likes their dad (he was an abusive alcoholic), and they don't much like each other either. It's a story of a broken family, with MMA as background noise. 

What makes it all work, despite the cliches, is the acting. On top of that, the emotional cues are handled with a little more restraint than I expected: the lack of subtlety is stronger on paper than it is on film, and that plays to the strengths of the film which are its actors. The family drama is effective because cliche, or not, Hardy, Edgerton, and Nolte sell these characters as real people. This is, of course, in stark contrast to the characters in Redbelt who are all fluent in cynicism, and duplicity (but with none of the charm that has typically defined Mamet characters). 

And then, of course, there's the MMA. My only complain here is that the choreography suffers in the part of the film that most needs it: during the tournament. It makes up a big portion of the last half, and it suffers from Greengrass syndrome, with its incoherent shaking of the camera. However, the brutality of the fights are not lost on the audience: one scene in the beginning of the film at a training gym is brilliantly filmed, and Tom Hardy sells the physicality in a way no other actor ever could. He's utterly believable as a (good) MMA fighter. 

However, more intriguing to me is what the public takes away from the film in response to the sport. The incendiary writer of Badass Digest (formerly of Chud), Devin Faraci, has this to say:

Once the Sparta tournament begins we’re pretty much knee deep in the world of MMA, and it’s exactly what I expected: unpleasantly cruel, filled with Affliction clothes and more than slightly homoerotic, despite appealing to likely homophobic crowds

It'd be easy, especially for MMA fans, to grab a red meat sentence like this, and mock it. But how much of this is really that inaccurate? Between Dana White's rant against Loretta Hunt (and his ensuing apology for his behavior with "this is the fight business"), and the number of fighters having made homophobic statements recently (some of whom we've long respected), such a statement isn't without at least some merit. Even worse, the MMA media completely tolerates this behavior. However, I was curious what other critics might think. Did their impression of the sport that has long held the stigma of being barbaric change? I asked Matt Goldberg of Collider, and here's what he had to say:

I think our notions of barbarism are pretty flexible.  Boxing and MMA have the same goal: use physical violence to beat your opponent into submission.  But I feel that boxing's longevity and its history have caused us to bestow an odd nobility on the sport. 

I've never watched MMA and while I've seen Warrior, I still don't think I'll tune in.  That's no slam against the sport because I've never tuned in to watch boxing even though I respect films like Rocky and Raging Bull (to be clear: I don't think Warrior is anywhere close to as good as those classics).  But I do think Warrior does a great service to the sport by showing a variation of fighting styles.  Yes, it's still brutal (and I think the PG-13 rating even hides some of the true brutality that comes with how violent MMA can be), but we see that Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) uses a fierce, direct approach that goes straight for the KO while his brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton) goes for a more wrestling-style approach, using holds to make his opponent tap out.  Each style speaks to the personality of the character, but it also lets the audience know that this isn't just bare-knuckle boxing.

I think Warrior will improve the image of the sport but it's not going to bring in legions of new fans overnight.  I won't comment as to what "barbarism" is because I think there are many socially-condoned acts which could be and are considered "barbaric".  However, the film did inform me that there's more to the sport than just bare-knuckle boxing and highlights the "mixed" aspect of the sport.

There's a line in the movie that won me over right away. Edgerton's wife is concerned about his health, and whether or not he'll get hurt trying to make money competing against these animals in these small shows. Edgerton's character gives a refreshingly perceptive response: "they're not fighters...they're just guys who saw too much UFC on TV".

Gavin O'Connor, the film's director who I've neglected to give credit to but who does a very competent job, is clearly a fan of MMA, but more importantly, an intelligent one. There are plenty of nods to the sport: Koba as a Fedor basically (played by Kurt Angle, who I didn't recognize until looking at IMDB), Sam Sheridan playing Mike Goldberg (if only) to Bryan Callen's obvious Joe Rogan (not ironically the two are friends in real life), MMA Live (with Rashad Evans in the studio), the TapouT crew, the Frank Campana character a clear reference to Greg Jackson, etc.

Fans of the sport will sense the familiarity without being pandered to, and all the while, aspects of the sport we are proud of get to be included. Edgerton's character, for example, doesn't walk out to "Face the Pain" (the tournament feels very much like a UFC event with its fighter entrances), but to 'Ode to Joy': a trivial presence to some, but I loved it. Warrior is not only not terrible, it's actually kind of good.