Physicality and Intimacy in Warrior

Warrior is the slightly misnamed MMA movie that opened this past Friday nationwide starring Tom Hardy (Inception, Bronson), Joel Edgerton (King Arthur), and Nick Nolte (Blue Chips).  It tells the story of two brothers who join a Grand Prix formatted, winner take all, MMA tournament. The movie, however, is so much more. 

Like The Fighter, this movie is “about” fighting, but only in so much as a context for looking at a family drama.  The brothers are the sons of a reformed drunk who divided their family when his wife could take it no longer and moved out.  Resent runs deep throughout the film, and from more than one character.  All three men are at different points in their lives, and have come to grips with their previous reality to different degrees, the father seeks forgiveness from his sons, they want little familial connection to him, and in some ways to one another.

I once watched the movie Topsy-Turvy, and someone explained a scene in it to me as being a great display of acting ability because the camera was fixed, it never moved in the room, nor did it zoom in on actor’s faces.  Essentially, in my mind, the actors had to hold my interest without any gimmicks or aids. 

Warrior is extremely intimate in its filming.  The vast majority of the film features over-the-shoulder camera shots which are tightly focused on the face of who is speaking.  The frequent lack of soundtrack or background music only makes it more personal.  Hardy, Edgerton, and Nolte are all fantastic, the former two for their physical dominance (they definitely saw the inside of a gym before filming) and remarkable fragility they convey in their performances.  As destructive as they look, they each seem to be just as easily broken by their pasts and by the world around them.

Like all sports movies, you know roughly what will happen based on the movie formulas of the genre.  That doesn’t mean, however, that Warrior wasn’t exceptionally moving.  I got goosebumps during some sequences, my gut tightened as I feared for the protagonists, and a smile went from ear to ear when they succeeded; applause broke out behind me in the theater far before the film ended.

This movie has a special kind of heart and drive to it.  It’s delicately handled and I highly recommend it.  In fact, I enjoyed it more than Contagion.

Matt Brickell is a contributing writer whose reach is far greater than most in his weight class.